Poi Days!
by Hieda no Akyuu
Summary: Short, sweet entries of a lucky naval officer married to former ship girl destroyer Yuudachi and his twin daughters and their interactions with the daughters of other fellow retired ship girls. Because if one Poi isn't enough, you can always have three.
1. Breakfast

**A/N:**

**I'm writing way too many new stories. But there ain't no brakes on the story train.**

**This is an off-shoot of my One-Shot Collection, this time inspired by artist Yano Toshinori, who is working on an image series depicting ship girls in their twenties or thirties after retiring from navy service and living with their families in their married lives. It seemed that a lot of people really liked the image of 26-year-old Yuudachi with her twin daughters, so this story will focus on their shenanigans in everyday life and their interactions with other ship girls and their daughters, unlike the original image series, which focuses on a thirty-year-old Yuubari.**

**This will be a very different style from all of my other stories, which have traditionally been gritty, serious, and packed with dark humor (debatable) and violence. This story will be much different - it'll just be a fun read, more focused on comedy and slice of life. Hopefully.**

**Again, this'll be like One-Shot Fleet in which I don't expect to update this often, just as a fun write for every once in a while. And yes, the title is a blatant rip-off of Dog Days. Because...well...  
**

**Poi.**

**That's why.**

**Thanks for reading,**

**-Akyuu no Joshu**

* * *

_"Tou-saaaaaaaaaan! Wake uuuuuuuuuuuup, pooooooooooooooooi!"_

I hear the voice before I open my eyes, and I know what's going to happen. But I don't do much to prevent it - past experiences have taught me that nothing can stop the Poi train. I roll over in my bed and try to sit up, but both of my daughters are already airborne, soaring across the bedroom.

It's their favorite thing to do in the morning.

_"Geh!"_

I get smothered by both of my twin daughters slamming down me like two patrol boats from the air, and their giggles and shrill yelps of delight rattle my ears.

"Mama said to come wake you up!" Yuudahachi, the older one, says with that beautiful smile of hers. "It's already nine!"

With Sandachi shaking my head back and forth, I glance over at the alarm clock next to my bed on the drawers. Sure enough, it's 9:10AM. Yuudachi probably woke up half an hour ago already.

"Aaah, crap..." I mutter, sitting up. Sandachi's still holding onto my neck as I do, and Yudahachi's sitting on my knee on the sheets. "Yeah...it's probably time to get up..."

But before I can get out of bed, Sandachi decides she's going to run the show. She tackles me back down onto bed and plants her butt on my chest, staring down at me with those bright red eyes of hers that're filled with excitement.

"Today's a Saturday, Tou-san! Can we go to the park today? Can we? Can we? Can we? Can we? Can we - "

"If you can let me breathe, yes, we'll go..." I whisper. Sandachi's weight on my chest is crushing my windpipe, so she's choking me out without even knowing. Sandachi quickly gets off. "First, let me get dressed and we can eat..."

With the prospect of going to the park firmly in her eyes, Sandachi scrambles back out of the room, and Yuudahachi follows her out. I can hear Sandachi screaming _"We're going to the park! Kaa-saaaaaaaan, the paaaaaaaaaaaaark!" _and the consequent excited barking and shrieking of our two puppies, a Labrador retriever and a Shiba Inu. I throw on some jeans and one of my navy shirts that says "EVENING SHOWERS" in English letters on the front and the numbers 1906, 1936, 1958, and 1994 on the back with the traditional Japanese naval ensign design. It's one of my favorite shirts, and for good reason.

The smell of buttered toast, eggs, ham, and rice hits me full force when I walk into the small dining room that's connected to our kitchen. Sandachi and Yuudahachi carry the bowls of rice to the small dinner table, and I head inside the kitchen after they come out with the puppies nipping at their heels.

"Morning, Yuudachi," I smile at my wife.

Yuudachi turns around, grinning back at me with the big wooden rice cooker spoon in her hand. She's dressed casually in short jeans and tank top, and her long, gradient blonde-peach hair's tied up in a nice ponytail. She prefers cooking without an apron, saying that it gets in the way.

"Mornin', Colonel!" Yuudachi giggles brightly, snapping to salute, just like our younger days. I approach her, and she walks up and gives me a big ol' kiss on the cheek. Even years after we started dating, married, and had kids, her kiss will always feel special. In return, I reach up and rub those ear flaps of hers she got with her second remodel and give her a kiss of my own on her forehead, and Yuudachi giggles some more in appreciation. "Sandachi was yelling something about the park. Are we going there today?"

"Probably. We don't have any plans for today, and today's a Saturday. We might as well," I shrug. "We might meet some of the other there, too. Today looks like a nice day out."

Yuudachi nods. "Then after breakfast?"

"Sure."

Yuudachi smiles and puts my bowl of rice in my hands. "Then breakfast time!"

Our two daughters chant back, "Food, food time!"

And our Shiba Inu lets out another one of her horrifyingly cute screams.

* * *

I was just a leftenant, back then - doing some wetwork for the navy. And when I say "wetwork", I mean the black ops project for the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force. A black ops project that recruited girls - specifically, orphan girls - all over Japan and sometimes shipped in from out of the country who were deemed capable of becoming biologically augmented to fight the threat of Abyssal ships that arose back then. It was shady, it was morally controversial, and it involved everything bad that the Japanese public fears. But regardless, it was put into motion, and thus a war that the world, much less Japan, never ended up knowing about was waged and eventually won by such girls. Thus, a morally and ethically questionable black ops project was able to be dismantled at the end of the war and its members successfully integrated into Japanese society, and many of the ship girls, as its soldiers were called, were able to do so by marrying navy officers. Not only was it easy on the government, who needed to keep tabs over the ship girls to make sure they weren't going to expose any military secrets and could rely on us, the navy guys, to make sure nothing bad happened, but it just made sense: practically all the girls who married knew their husbands for a long time during the war before their marriages.

Thus, everyone involved wins: the ship girls didn't have to become decommissioned and scrapped once the war was done, the people involved in the black ops project (it never got a name, that's how secret it was) didn't have to be silenced by the government or anything shady have happened to them, me included, the enemy threat was resolved, and the public never has to know or worry about the fact that the Japanese government funded a program that took in orphan girls and turned them into fighting and killing machines. Nope, they don't need to worry about that, not at all.

I was selected randomly to participate in the black ops project that constructed and directed the ship girl fleet that was produced to combat the Abyssal fleet. Long story short, some terrorists from an international terrorist organization known as "A.A.H.W." stole genetic information from government research facilities around the world and compiled them together to create the blueprint of a sea-based weapon in the of a humanoid being, able to be produced cheaply and en masse. An American special ops force known only as Seal Team Six managed to steal the blueprints, as far as we were told, and they shared the blueprints with every major country in the world so that the Abyssal name vy could be easily overwhelmed, and thus, many nations have ship girl fleets, but all such fleets were universally retired once the Abyssal threat was resolved, though all the governments agreed that they could recall these fleets back to service if such a need arose in case of emergency. It's a lot more complicated than what I've summarized here, but it's as simple as it gets.

"Sandachi, don't give Ishii your toast, it's not good for them," I scold my younger twin daughter, who's trying to sneak a piece of buttered toast to Ishii, our Labrador puppy. Caught red-handed, Sandachi frowns at me.

"But Tou-saaaaaaann..."

"No means no, Sandachi. Ishii's got plenty of food in her own plate. We have treats for her too, so don't give her toast."

Sandachi pouts, the hair flaps that she inherited from her mother folding inwards angrily. "Fine, poi! You're so mean, Tou-san!"

I sigh while Yuudachi just giggles at our discourse.

Back to the point...

I met Yuudachi when I transferred to Yokosuka Naval District. In order to prevent any one commander from having control over the entire ship girl fleet, the Navy broke up control of it by assigning parts of the Japanese ship girl fleet to different naval bases located around the coast of country with roughly equivalently powerful squadrons. In addition, they assigned handlers to many of the ship girls - not all, but a lot of them - to help them train, to provide counseling, and make sure they weren't going to break under military routine and soldier life. After all, they are still soldiers. You can see why a lot of the ship girls ended up marrying after the war was over. In fact, I'd bet that it was part of the Navy's plan to reintegrate the girls back into Japanese society.

Me personally, I was just a nineteen year old scrub, a fresh greenie straight out of naval academy. I didn't really have any life direction set in stone for myself, so my parents told me that I ought to join the military to give my life some meaning, so reluctantly, I did. Imagine their surprise when I showed up at their door after the war was over, when I was twenty-two, and introduced them to my new fiance.

"Ah, honey, you've got some rice stuck on here..." Yuudachi picks a grain of rice off my lip like we're in a slice of life anime and eats it herself.

"You're supposed to feed it back to me," I chuckle. "You messed up! That calls for a _punishment!" _Saying so dramatically, I swoop my chopsticks down and swipe away a slice of ham.

"A-Ah! Hey! Don't - that's _my _ham! You've got your own, don't you, poi!?" Yuudachi whines. Even after all these years, Yuudachi still maintains the core elements of why I came to love her so. "Fine - I'll just take _this_, then!" Yuudachi yanks away my hard-boiled egg, which is one of my favorite breakfast foods.

"A'ight then, I'll be takin' _this!" _I spiral down into an immature chopstick-fest of stealing each other's food with my wife, and our daughters look on, very entertained.

"Mama and Papa are just like Ishii and Hasashi, ehehe!" Yudahachi giggles, and the puppies, hearing their names being called, hop up onto the side of Yudahachi's chair, cocking their heads as to why they've been called.

We've been together for a decade now, been married for seven, just about. I thought at the time when Yuudachi first started dating that I wouldn't know how to handle one Poi. Now, I've got to deal with three Pois, five if you include our puppies.

I'm surrounded by a family of Pois, but it's alright. The more Solomon Merry-Go-Rounds, the better.


	2. Morning Solomons

After breakfast, Yuudahachi and Sandachi help us clear the table, and once they've done that, they bounce around in the living room with our puppies, playing with them while Yuudachi and I wash the dishes.

I remember Yuudachi and I, towards the end of the war, when it was clear that the war would end, talking about what we wanted to do once we were married. Yuudachi, for as fierce of a ship girl as she became famous throughout the Navy as, is surprisingly quite romantic and cute; she wanted to get started on making a family right away as soon as we were discharged from navy service. I, on the other hand, wasn't so sure; I had asked Yuudachi if she didn't want to at least spend a couple years together without having to worry about children. After all, like the Westerners say, once you're married, game over, man! (To your freedom, that is.)

But Yuudachi was fiercely insistent. She's been through lots of battles, especially dangerous night battles, in which there were too many close calls, too many injuries and critical wounds dealt that could've easily meant that anyone, including Yuudachi herself, could've very well died. So when it came to having children, Yuudachi really wanted to get started right away to the point where I'm pretty sure she was going paranoid, that something tragic would happen to us like in those dramas where one person in a love relationship gets really hurt or even dies before the relationship can really get anywhere. The bud gets nipped before it blooms, as they say. Yuudachi even threatened not to marry me if I didn't agree to get started on making a family with her right out of the military. By that point, pro tip for all you bachelors out there, if your fiance loves you to the point where she'll threaten to cut the relationship if you don't get busy for the sake of raising a little happy family of Pois, you should probably marry her already. Just my two cents.

Plus, that would mean that I would miss out on her pois.

As a man, I will fully confess that I have fallen victim to Yuudachi's verbal tic of "poi".

Some people find it annoying, but I am different.

I embrace the Poi.

I was shaped by the Poi.

I was molded by the Poi.

I was given life by the Poi, before -

I'll stop.

Point is, I'd become addicted to her saying Poi all the time and marrying her would mean that I would be able to satisfy my requirement of daily Pois to my heart's content. It's like how one of my good friends from naval academy was assigned to the destroyer Inazuma, and he ended up proposing to her too so that he could hug her whenever he wants to so that he can recharge up on Inazumium. (Japanese pun with the kanji for Inazuma's name and the kanji for "recharge".)

And that's what I did. Not just for the Pois, but I also know what Yuudachi can be like if she goes full Nightmare, and I don't want to make her agitated more than she needs to be. Besides, my parents always complained to me when I was growing up how they'd always be wondering what their grandchildren would look like. Again, imagine their surprise when they found out that their grandchildren are two of the world's top tier seven-year-old kids.

One thing that we discovered when we got married was the fact that because of all the biotechnological augmentations the ship girls of the black ops project received to gain abilities to fight the Abyssals, their reproductive capabilities were compromised. They can still have children, but for whatever reason that not even the navy doctors can explain, all ship girls can only give birth to daughters. I personally don't mind this - I don't really care whether I got a son or a daughter, just having children was an achievement enough for me. But I know that not everyone who married the ship girls appreciated this, but then again, it was either divorce and try to find another wife and leave their ship girls heartbroken or make do with their situation and stay with their ship girl wives anyway.

Obviously, all of them stayed, because the last thing any man needs is to have a heartbroken ship girl who can throw you from downtown Tokyo into Tokyo Bay go all yandere on you. Imagining Yuudachi going yandere over me gives me nightmares. Literally.

"Hey, honey, do you mind if I go out and see if Shigure wants to come with us?" Yuudachi asks me after we finish the dishes.

"Yeah, sure. I don't know about my brother, though," I smirk, and Yuudachi giggles with me.

"Oh, I'm sure he'll want to come with us," Yuudachi smiles. "You know him best; it's so obvious he's head over heels for Shigure. Remember our wedding, pooooi?"

I facepalm, trying to hide my embarrassed smirk. "Oh God, Yuudachi, please, don't remind me - "

Yuudachi just laughs in my face as we recall our rather hilariously embarrassing wedding. So many things were off that day that produced so many cringeworthy moments, but now, they're just fun memories that we can talk about and share. Our daughters, closely followed by our puppies, bound into the kitchen, very interested in why we're laughing and enjoying ourselves and wanting to get in on the fun too.

Our daughters were born on July 31st - Yudahachi is the older twin, and Sandachi is the younger twin. Those aren't their actual names; their real names are both Yuudachi. Yes, you heard me right - my wife and both of my daughters all have the exact same name. The same goes for all married ship girls who have children, with a few notable exceptions. I even have the birth certificates that prove that both of my daughters are named Yuudachi. I'm not the greatest at christening, so I told that Yuudachi could handle the naming. And so when I asked her what she'd named our daughters at the hospital, she gave me one of those big, embarrassed smiles that I know so well and told me that she'd ended up giving both of them her own name. I now regret ever giving Yuudachi that choice, because now, whenever I need to take care of official family business like going to the hospital or going to the city hall and I bring my daughters (and sometimes the wife too), I get weird looks from receptionists and employees who realize that three people in my family all have the same name. The worst part about it all is that people think _I'm _the one who named our daughters, so they end up thinking I'm this lovestruck husband who can't get over the fact that he's married. (They're not wrong in that respect, but it's nowhere as exaggerated as they think.) So naturally, things tend to get awkward fast, to say the least.

So Yuudachi and I decided to give our own little cute family names to our daughters to differentiate them. Because the government required us to register our children directly so that the government can recognize them as legal human beings if they end up in any sort of legal trouble or in case the black ops project ever does gets uncovered and leaked to the public, the older twin received a serial number of DD-108, and the younger twin received a serial number of DD-103. So for this reason, we ended up calling the older twin "Yuudahachi" (hachi being Japanese for the number eight, and saying her name that way rolled off the tongue easily) and the younger twin "Sandachi" (san being Japanese for the number three). Nothing super sophisticated, just something cute and whimsical, just like they are.

Though, just like to point out, if we named our older daughter "Hachidachi", it would be a bit _too_ obvious that there was a number in her name. In case you're wondering. I'd thought about it, though, to be honest, because it rhymes and it sounds super cute. But it's whatever.

"Ishii, we're going to the park! Aren't you excited?" Sandachi gets on all fours on the kitchen floor, imitating the puppies, and the puppies imitate her back, arching their backs and gazing up at Sandachi with anticipation. Yuudahachi joins in on this too, and Sandachi bounces around on all fours, and the three others bounce with her. "It's park time! Let's go, follow meeeeee~"

Leading the pack, Sandachi scrambles out of the kitchen, still on all fours, and the puppies, getting excited because Sandachi looks like she's having fun, and if the puppies see something they think is fun, they'll immediately jump in on it too. So our home gets filled once again with the barking of Pois and puppies.

I glance at my wife, Yuudachi.

"Why don't you go join them?" I suggest.

"If I go, I'm taking you with me!" Yuudachi grins at me, and she grabs my arm and drags me out of the kitchen into our living room, where the girls are romping around with the puppies. "It's a Solomon Merry-Go-Round, girls! Get 'im, poi!"

Yuudachi pins me down onto the hard floor and backs away so that the girls and the puppies can all simultaneously pounce on me, and then to drop the hammer, she pounces on me too.

It's Solomon Merry-Go-Round time - a time when the Pois reign supreme. This's what my life's become, Poi Hell. Or Heaven? I can't decide yet.

Clearly, there's a huge dog motif that runs in the family. Both Yuudachi and her sister Shigure, in fact. Yuudachi showed tendencies of doglike behavior even before her remodels, but each time she got remodeled, she showed more canine characteristics, and it came out in full force with her second remodel. Therefore, a year ago on the twins' birthday, when they said they wanted puppies as a birthday gift, I brought home those two puppies, a Shiba Inu and golden Lab, and all three Pois went absolutely ballistic when they saw those puppies poke their heads out from the carrier box I brought them home in. Needless to say, Yuudachi, Yuudahachi, and Sandachi are all really good with dogs - so good, in fact, that I wouldn't be surprised if there's something in their genes that allows them to get along so well with dogs. They love all dogs indiscriminately - there were many a time when we'd be out in the park or visiting some place and Sandachi would see a dog that she really liked and she'd just go run over to it and hug it. Both Yuudahachi and Sandachi are friends with all the park's visitors' dogs, and every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon at around four or five, there's this unofficial dog owners' club that meets at the park nearby, and that's my daughters' favorite times of the week. Yuudahachi and Sandachi have actually become quite famous around our area for their uncanny ability to play with and get along with any dog they meet.

Yuudahachi is the quieter one, the obedient one. She usually takes things at her own pace and doesn't really care about anything else. She usually goes along with whatever her younger sister Sandachi does, since Sandachi usually goes around doing crazy things and having as much fun as humanly possible, and Yuudahachi likes having fun with her sister. She's the kind of girl who sits on the grass with a pack of dogs and puppies around her, chilling underneath a tree somewhere and petting all of them. Funnily enough, she inherited Yuudachi's pre-remodel look of no hair flaps and straight blonde hair, though her blonde hair somehow turns a warm, pungent gold if she's out in the sun. It's a beautiful sight, really. Interestingly, she has red eyes, unlike her mother, who had green eyes before remodeling the second time.

Sandachi is the louder one, the rebellious one and the one who trashes the house the most, to be completely honest. Like I said before, her one single mission in life as of right now is to have the most fun as humanly possible in the shortest amount of time. She bothers herself with absolutely nothing else. So if throwing eggs around the house means that she's going to have fun, she'll do it. And she did, _multiple times._ I'm not sure whether or not Sandachi humanly has a sense of regret or remorse, or if she just goes "WORTH!" and just smiles at us when we scold her for all the stupid things she's done. She's the kind of girl who's running fifty laps around the park, getting chased by the more energetic pack of dogs in the park. Because she's small enough, sometimes she even climbs up on one of the really big dogs' backs and rides around gallantly. Somehow, the dogs know what she wants and are usually very accommodating. She's inherited Yuudachi's post-remodel look, with the hair flaps and all, but her eyes are green, like her mother's eyes were before remodel. In addition, while Yuudachi's hair is blonde, gradient to peachy pink towards the bottom of her hair, Sandachi's hair is bottom half peach, top half light blonde, with peachy bangs. It's a bit odd if you think about it, but it's better if you see it in person, because I think it's gorgeous. Her hair's almost exactly like a swirl of sherbet ice cream, if you look at it for a long time. And I'm almost positive that the peachy parts of Sandachi's hair is what attracts all the dogs, because I always see some of the dogs licking or sniffing Sandachi's bottom half of her hair with relish, like they're dog treats or something. It tickles Sandachi whenever they do that, so she ends up in a laughing fit most of the time.

"Okay! It's time to go to the park, pooooi!" Yuudachi calls, getting up off me, and the girls chant, "Park, park, park!" with the puppies barking and screaming to provide the chorus.

I've overdosed on Poi for today. But like a Vitamin C overdose, I might have a few minor side effects such as epic nosebleeds, cuteness-induced heart attacks, and/or spontaneous hugging, but I can't die from it, so it's all good.


	3. Meet the Family

We got our daughters dressed up in their clothes again. They really like their Shiratsuyu-Class destroyer uniforms that I had made for them recently, just so that I have the excuse to see the uniform again. Yuudachi herself sometimes wears her own just for laughs, but she's outgrown them long before already, but she still keeps it hanging in our bedroom. Yuudahachi wears the stock uniform, but Sandach, just like her mother after she got her second remodel, has everything, scarf and all. It's their favorite thing to wear, and they rarely wear anything else.

As a result, though, the end of Sandachi's scarf is frayed and chewed out, because our Shiba Inu puppy, Hisashi, used to like chewing on the end of it as it trailed behind Sandachi's shoulder. Unfortunately, that gave Sandachi the terrible idea of grabbing her parents' shirts and pulling them down. One of those instances was when we were shopping at the department store and Sandachi pulled Yuudachi's shirt down so hard that it ripped right off, leaving Yuudachi with only her bra on right in front of me. Yeah, _that _wasn't awkward at all.

Speaking of which, both of our girls were born with the same kinds of powers that Yuudachi has. The same goes for all the daughters of the ship girls - they, too, have the capability to become ship girls themselves, and the government, realizing this, mandated that all families of the ship girls bring their children to their local naval districts for one month each summer to have them train. Normally you'd think that such an order is unfair and a bit authoritative, but it ended up working out. The daughters of the ship girls got a chance to meet each other and make friends with other girls like themselves, and the ship girls themselves got a chance to see each other at least once a year. Plus, they can shake the rust off their skills as ship girls.

Raising the new generation of ship girls in the most adorable way possible. This world is unreal sometimes.

Yuudahachi and Sandachi burst out of the door with the two puppies close behind them, rearing to go to the park.

"Hey, you two, wait, we need to put the leashes on!" Yuudachi cries after them, but Sandachi just goes on doing her own thing and bolts over to the house next door.

"Kiri-chaaaaaaaaaaaaan! Let's go to the paaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaark!" Sandachi yells as I hurry out the door with the leashes that Yuudachi tosses me so that she can get dressed. I find the twins standing in front of the house next door, looking into the house from outside the quaint little gate. Sandachi's waving her arms over her head, thinking that will attract more attention if she does.

"Girls, you can't just run out here with the puppies with you," I berate them gently, putting the leashes around the puppies' collars. "Here, take these. Mom still needs to get dressed appropriately - "

The door opens to the house we're in front of, and out peeks Kirisame, a girl just one year younger than the twins. Then, the door opens up further, and I see my brother holding the door open.

"Oh, Tora-nii," my brother calls out, "Did the twins want to go to the park today?"

"Yeah...sorry 'bout this, having them make a ruckus first thing in the morning," I grimace awkwardly.

"Nah, it's nothing. Hey, Shigure-chaaaaaan, the twins wanna go to the park!" my younger brother calls into the house, and I hear footsteps hurrying to the door, and Shigure emerges, pouting and pulling on her husband's sleeve.

"Honey, I _told _you not to call me that when other people are around..." Shigure says in a low voice, but I can still hear. Yuudahachi and Sandachi are, meanwhile, jumping up and down with excitement, waving at Kirisame, who gives a shy smile back. "Oh, Colonel, it's you. Good morning, sir."

"Oh, come off it, Shigure, we're no longer in active service, so don't call me that," I laugh. "Double standards, much?"

Shigure frowns at me too, but not seriously. "But you were our handler. Besides...you know how it is, I just can't get myself to address you by your name. I've tried before, you remember."

"Papa lets Mama call him Colonel too!" Yuudahachi pipes up at the exact wrong moment. "I think he likes it!"

I slap my hand over Yuudahachi's mouth to cover her voice. "Sssshhh, Yuudahachi, you weren't supposed to say that - " I try to stop the bleeding, but it's too late. Shigure gives me a satisfied smile.

"Ooooh? Colonel, what was it about 'double standards', again?" she coos teasingly.

"Alright, alright, fine, I'm caught!" I capitulate. "So anyway, you guys wanna join us for a trip to the park? It shouldn't be long."

"Yeah, Aunty, let Kiri-chan come with us!" Sandachi cheers.

Shigure smiles and nods. "Sure, the weather's nice today. We might even meet some of the others there too. Would you like to come with us, dear?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah, 'course, wherever you wanna go," my brother says quickly. I smirk at him.

"Still livin' the dream there, aren't'cha, Taro-chan?" I mock my younger brother, who snaps back immediately.

"Hey, shut up! Just 'cause you were in the navy doesn't make you hot sh - "

Shigure silences him by grabbing his cheek and pinching and pulling at the same time.

_"Honey, what did I say about using bad words in front of our daughter?" _Shigure asks in her signature don't-make-me-angry voice.

"I-I'm sorry, Shigure-san, I'm really sorry - ow, ow ow ow ow!" my brother gasps, but Shigure lets go of him pretty quick.

"You should've held on for a bit longer, he deserved that one," I fold my arms, disappointed that I didn't get to see him suffer some more. Shigure just smiles back at me as her husband rubs his cheek.

"You know I can't do that," Shigure admits, "he's your brother and my husband. But even still, _please _watch your language."

"Yes, ma'am..."

Shigure looks down at her daughter. "Come, Kirisame, let's get you ready to go. You want to go, right?"

Kirisame nods really slowly.

"Colonel, just please give us a few minutes, we will be out there shortly," Shigure calls.

"Is it okay for the twins to come in?" I ask back, and my daughters' ears perk up when they hear this and start bouncing around me excitedly, the puppies joining in on the fun too.

"Oh, come off it, Tora-nii, your daughters knocked over one of our bookshelves the other day, and you _said _you'd ground them from coming over to our place!" my brother reminds me.

"That was, like, a month ago! Geez, are you still upset over that?"

"He's right, honey, let them inside," Shigure says gently. "Yuudahachi-chan, Sandachi-chan, come on in!"

I unlock the small gate for the twins, since they aren't tall enough to reach over to lift up the gate lock for themselves, and I take the leashes from them to keep the puppies with me as they bolt inside, tackling Kirisame when they reach her like they're long-lost friends finally reuniting for the first time in decades. Only thing is, they do that every single time they see her.

* * *

I was the handler for the Shiratsuyu-Class destroyers who were stationed at Yokosuka Naval District, who were Shigure, Yuudachi, and Harusame. Normally, the handlers get one or two ship girls whom they're in charge of, but I got assigned to three for some reason. I did my best taking care of them, and by doing so, all three of them got quite attached to me, Yuudachi the most out of those three.

It was a difficult situation, back then. Shigure and Yuudachi were sort of like love rivals, competing to see who'd get me first. But I think it was pretty obvious from the beginning whom I would eventually dedicate my life to in marriage. The problem was that Shigure didn't seem to be totally fine with that, even though she said that she would be okay. I didn't want to leave her sad - I was her handler, after all. So after the war was over and we got discharged, I brought Shigure and Yuudachi to my parents' place and introduced Shigure to my brother with the wild and far-fetched hopes that she'd hook up with him.

My brother, Shintaro, is two years younger than me. He's not a military guy at all - unlike me, he got great grades in school and went to Todai, or Tokyo University. But when he got there and saw what the university had to offer, he didn't really think staying there for more than a few years was worth the money that would have to be paid and the debt that he'd accrue, so being the smart guy that he is, he got a simple degree in communications and graduated in two years, just before the war was over. For my brother, as soon as he saw Shigure, according to him, anyway, it was love at first sight, which sounds really corny coming from someone like him. He immediately asked Shigure out, which totally surprised her, and she ended up accepting. And after their first date, Shintaro told me about how badly he regretted not building a significant enough social life during school, because his first date with Shigure was full of awkwardness. Basically, just put a glasses nerd together with a quiet, polite girl like Shigure, and that's what they were.

But their relationship developed really quick when Shigure said that she'd recognized a lot of the qualities that she saw in me in my brother, so she agreed to marry him and have our weddings together on the same exact day. I asked her if she wasn't rushing this decision, but she said that she'd feel terrible for rejecting someone like my brother who obviously really liked her and was fully capable of taking care of her and the family that they would have together, and everything turned out alright. Who would've thought, right? They had a daughter who was born just a year after our twins. Shigure recalled that she didn't want our child to be left alone when it was born (this was before we learned that we'd have twin daughters), so she started preparing for her own pregnancy too.

Kirisame is their daughter's name. She isn't registered with the naval list yet, because she hasn't exhibited any qualities that a normal ship girl should have. Yuudahachi and Sandachi have already demonstrated their insane strength and their energetic behavior plenty of times, but Kirisame hasn't yet. She's very shy, like Shigure was when I'd met her for the first time. But around Yuudahachi and Sandachi, she opens up a tiny bit. The only time I've ever seen her smiling is around her parents or around my daughters. She also looks _exactly _like her mother. Not much of a surprise there, though, considering how my own daughters turned out.

Yuudachi comes out of our house, locking the door behind her and meeting me out in front of Shigure's place.

"Are they inside?" she asks, referring to our daughters.

"Yeah, Shigure let them in."

Yuudachi smirks a bit. "Oh, your brother isn't gonna be too happy with that, is he?"

"Yeah, he wasn't."

"But Shigure made him come in, right?"

"Basically."

Yuudachi giggles.

"Seriously, honey, your brother's so funny."

"Well...he's your brother-in-law twice over, so...plus, we've been living side-by-side in the same houses for seven years!"

Yuudachi puckers her lips. "But I like calling him your brother, though."

"I wasn't saying that you had to call him 'Brother-in-Law'."

"I know..."

Yuudachi stoops to pick up Ishii, taking her leash from me. "Ishii-chan, you wanna go to the park too, don't'cha? Don't'cha? Awwww, we'll be there soon, okaaayyy?" My wife rubs her face into Ishii's, who barks excitedly and starts licking her face all over, which, unlike most normal people, Yuudachi doesn't mind at all. Hisashi starts whining when she sees Ishii getting attention from Mom (I call my wife "Mom" whenever I'm talking to the dogs, so to our puppies, Yuudachi is "Mom" to them too), so I pick her up and rub my cheek against her face too, which she makes herself content with.

Shigure, Shintaro, and Kirisame emerge from their house, and the twins dash back out to us again. Shigure is holding the leash to their own pet dog, a St. Bernard puppy. Behind Kirisame walks their cat, Marisa.

"Is Mari-chan gonna come along with us today?" I ask, grinning as I stoop down to pet Marisa the cat, a gray and white tabby cat. She's the world's most chill chat who, like Sandachi, does whatever the heck she feels like, just in a more calm and chill manner that cats are known for. She purrs as I rub her head, since she knows who we are and even walks around in our backyard if she feels like it, seeing that our backyards are only separated by a single brick wall.

"Yeah, looks like she feels like coming with us," my brother grins. "Well, let's get going, yeah?"

The children and the puppies bark in excitement, and even Kiri-chan smiles shyly.


	4. A Special Skill

The park is just about a ten minute walk from both our houses. It's actually a pretty large park by Japanese standards, complete with a baseball park nearby where local amateur baseball teams practice day in and day out and a playground for kids. There's also a shallow but large pool where the local pigeons and birds like to hang out. The pigeons got scared by the twins the first time we brought them here, but over the years, it appears that the subsequent generations of pigeons have grown used to our twins' shenanigans and don't think twice about them.

It's a beautiful day outside: the ocean breeze that rolls in from the sea soothes the morning summer heat that warms up the earth, and the blue sky conducts along the puffy white clouds along lazily. It reminds me of our days back at Yokosuka - this is one of the scenes that we'd see. Yuudachi, Shigure, and I used to hang out at the piers with our shoes and socks off and kick the water while we sat at the end of the pier at high tide.

"Kiri-chaaaan, Yuudahachi-chan, Sandachi-chan, don't go too far from us!" Shigure calls out as the kids dance along the clear road that leads to the park. Kirisame, Shigure's daughter and my niece, is eagerly following Yuudahachi as Sandachi leads the pack proudly, running round and round in circles while laughing hysterically like it's the most amount of fun she's ever had.

"Aw, Shigure, just let 'em go, they're having so much fun, poi!" Yuudachi calms Shigure down. "There's nothing around anyway that we need to worry about. C'mon, doesn't that remind you of what we were like before too?"

I glance over at Shigure, who pouts quietly at her sister.

"D-Don't be like that, Yuudachi..." Shigure mumbles. "It's...that's embarrassing..."

"Awww, if that's embarrassin' for you, how'd you even give birth to such a cute daughter like Kiri-chan?" Yuudachi teases Shigure and pokes her cheek, and Shigure blushes even harder and tries to swat at Yuudachi's finger, much to everyone else's amusement. Then, Kirisame toddles over to us with a pretty blue flower and offers it up to her mother.

"Mommy..." Kirisame says so softly that the breeze rolling by is louder than her voice, "this...for you..."

Shigure kneels down and takes the flower from her daughter. "For me, sweetie?"

Kirisame nods shyly, and Yuudahachi walks up behind Kirisame and holds her hand.

"She saw it over there," Yuudahachi points to the grassy side of the road, where there're a lot of flowers soaking up the summer sun. "She said it'd go really good with her mommy."

Shigure's lips break into a moved smile. She sticks it in her hair like a hairpin, much to Kirisame's delight.

"How's that? Does that look good on me?" Shigure asks her daughter, who fervently nods. That's one of the rare times when I see my niece be enthusiastic about something. "Thank you, sweetie..."

As a reward, Shigure puts her hands on Kirisame's head and strokes those hair flaps that she's inherited from her mother, just like how Sandachi got her own hair flaps from her mother's second remodel. Kirisame loves when we stroke her hair laps. Yuudachi and I had to babysit Kirisame once while her parents went away on a shopping trip to get her a surprise present for her birthday, and I spent an entire afternoon sitting in the living room watching TV while stroking Kirisame's hair flaps, and she literally wanted nothing else. Eventually Yuudahachi and Sandachi, and even my own wife, saw what I was doing and dogpiled me, asking me to give them the same treatment too. So if you can imagine me surrounded by three Pois and my niece, and my hands alternating head pats and hair flap strokes, that was basically what happened.

Shigure lets Kirisame go, and she promptly joins the twins and our pets in their little parade down the road while we follow closely behind. Sandachi acts like a train conductor as we walk along like she's seen on television, and the dogs eagerly follow her like she's the alpha dog of the pack.

"Hey, honey," Yuudachi grabs my arm lovingly, "don't you ever wonder sometimes that having kids was something incredible? Like, I never thought we'd have such wonderful children."

I just laugh out loud. "Well, I told you before, I was the kind of guy whose parents always nagged on him to go get married as soon as possible because I was just a good-for-nothing around the house. Hey, Shintaro, you remember, don't you?"

Shintaro grins, remembering. "Yeah...Mom was always like, 'I want to see my grandchildren before I die, at least' like she was straight out of a Korean drama. She did end up getting what she wanted, though, so she can't complain about us anymore."

My brother and I chuckle together. Yuudachi turns to her own sister.

"Shigure, what about you, poi?" Yuudachi tilts her head cutely.

Shigure gives another one of her cute, embarrassed smiles. I can see why my brother fell in love with her, seeing that alone.

"I think it's...surreal," Shigure admits. "Even to this day, I...I sometimes can't believe I'm a mother, that - that we're all parents now. I'm...I feel blessed. Truly blessed..."

"She's not mentioning the part when before we found out Shigure was pregnant, she was all worried about how the child would turn out," my brother teases, much to his wife's chagrin. "She was like, 'oh, what if the child turns out to be rebellious? What if she won't listen to us? What if something happens to her?' She was worrying about so many things before then - ow, ow, ow! Shigure, stop, I give, I give!"

Shigure starts to bop her husband on the side of his arm with the bottom of her fists to make him be quiet.

"Why must _you _tease me so too, like Colonel did before?!" Shigure whines with a bit of a tear in her eye. "Oh, I can't believe you! I thought Colonel was bad enough, now I must have _you _making things worse!"

I laugh again at the memories. I used to tease Shigure and Harusame a lot because of their timid personalities, and they'd get mad at me for teasing them. It was all light teasing and done in good humor. I never saw the point in teasing Yuudachi because she was (and still is, to a certain extent) happy-go-lucky and never really got mad over anything. I still manage to tease Yuudachi a bit from time to time, though, if her guard's down.

"But it's all good now, isn't it?" I point out. "Kirisame's the sweetest kid on Planet Earth. I think you shouldn't have anything to worry about when it comes to her, Shigure."

Shigure gives me a thankful smile back. "Thank you, Colonel, but...but if it were not for the twins, I'm not sure...about how I would get her to make friends with others. She's...she's just so timid all the time...I do wish that she was a bit more outgoing like the twins..."

"Oh, don't worry, Shigure, she'll learn! Remember? You used to be really timid around Colonel too, but you got better with people over the years," Yuudachi reminds Shigure. "I'm sure Kiri-chan'll be the same, poi."

"I hope so, too," Shigure agrees. We watch the kids romp around with the dogs and Marisa the cat, rolling around in the grass on the side of the road, screaming and giggling all the while.

About five minutes into our walk to the park, I spy Sandachi and Yuudahachi freeze on their feet. If you've ever seen hamsters sense something and stand up tall and still to listen for audio cues, that's what the twins look like they're doing. Sandachi's ear-like hair flaps twitch and bob, turning like radars trying to pick up a frequency in the air. I'm sure if Yuudahachi had hair flaps, she'd be doing the same thing, too.

"I found the target!" I hear Sandachi yell, "proceeding to investigate the target!"

"Roger that, proceed to investigate target!" Yuudahachi repeats cheerfully, and Kirisame, too, raises her hands in the air very awkwardly, not knowing what's going on. Sandachi dashes down the road towards a few family shops and restaurants that line the road and are popular among the locals around here (the locals include us, too). The dogs and Marisa the cat, sniffing the air, know what's up and dash after the twins in hot pursuit. Watching them, Yuudachi and I laugh at their antics while Shigure and Shintaro stare at us, wondering what's going on.

"Oh, you two don't know yet," I tell them after I'm done laughing, "apparently, the twins found out that they've got a special skill."

"A special skill?" Shigure tilts her head in interest. "What - what could it be? What is their skill?"

I point at the shop that the kids're running towards.

"They can detect doughnuts!" I declare, much to Yuudachi's amusement. Shigure and Shintaro, unable to take me seriously, also break into laughter as well.

"Nooo...that can't be right," my brother smirks while rolling his eyes, "your kids do _not _have a skill like that!"

"No, I swear they do. My wife can vouch for it," I argue, "because the other day, I brought home some doughnuts and put them in my room without letting the twins know, and somehow, after dinner, when they'd never gone into my room, they both stood up and went straight to my room and brought out the doughnuts and complained to me why I was hogging all the doughnuts to myself. I'm not lying!"

"What an...interesting skill," Shigure giggles. "I wonder if Kiri-chan has a skill like that too...?"

We reach the doughnut shop that I'd bought those doughnuts that I mentioned from earlier, and the kids are already inside. The Furukawas, the family who runs the doughnut shop (it's really a bakery, but doughnuts are their specialty, so everyone just calls the bakery the doughnut shop), know the kids very well and the pets, so when we head inside and greet the Furukawas, the kids are already pressing their faces against the glass displays behind which sit mounds of doughnuts of all kinds and flavors.

"Targets located and discovered!" Sandachi jumps at us triumphantly, and I can almost see a movie effect-like "TA-DA!" pop out over her head. "Sandachi demands payment for a successful raid, poi!"

"Yeah, Tou-san, we want our dough - er, payment!" Yuudahachi also mimics her younger twin.

Meanwhile, Kirisame, having picked out something, toddles over to her mother again and lifts up a small plastic-wrapped cream-filled bread.

"Oh, sweetie, do you want this?" Shigure asks. "I can buy that for you."

But Kirisame shakes her head shyly.

"Um..." she mumbles, pressing the plastic against her mouth, "this...for...for Mommy..."

Shigure can't believe her ears. "E-Eh? For me, sweetie...?"

Kirisame nods harder. "I want - Mommy, you - eat this." She shakes the plastic-wrapped bread at her mother, and Shigure, moved greatly by her own daughter's nosebleed-inducing kindness, smothers her own daughter into her chest in a big hug and then rubs cheeks with her.

Seeing this causes me to put my hand powerfully on my younger brother's shoulder.

"You win this time, Taro-kun," I feign the voice of a defeated yakuza who's swearing revenge, "but next time, my children will prove cuter! Don't think this's over!"

My younger brother just gives me an odd look.

"We're not in an anime, Tora-nii..." he rolls his eyes. "Or maybe you were making some kind of obscure reference to a manzai?"

I frown, pulling my hand away. "C'mon, dude, you totally ruined it."

"What was I supposed to do...?"

"Play it off, geez! My younger brother's the world's smartest nerd, but when it comes to things like this, he's clueless! How can he be a fulfilling father to my cute niece?" I lament dramatically, making my brother bop me on the head.

"Ah, cut it out already, buy your kids what they want already," he advises me.

"Fine, fine," I agree. "Okay, payment is approved! What would'ja like, girls?"

"Pooooooi!" Yuudachi, Yuudahachi, and Sandachi all cheer.

"Wait, Yuudachi, why're _you _cheering with them too!?"

"Because I want doughnuts too, poi! So buy them for me!"

_"YOU HAVE YOUR OWN MONEY! WHAT'S THE MOTHER DOING ASKING FOR ME TO BUY HER DOUGHNUTS!?"_

Everyone, including the Furukawas who are tending their bakery, laughs, much to my chagrin, but my family of poi's don't care, for there are doughnuts to be had and eaten.


	5. Doughnuts for Everyone

We finally reach the park. Because of my cute twin daughters and my loving wife, I have to carry three boxes' worth of doughnuts, and not even my brother helps me. Shigure is carrying a plastic bag filled with pastries and muffins and other bakeries for Kiri-chan and her husband.

"Quite the struggle there, eh, Tora-nii?" Shintaro laughs as we walk onto the premises of the park.

"Oh, quiet, you," I snap back. "At least I have twice the cuteness in my children than you do."

"Huh? What was that?" I can see an anger vein pop on my brother's forehead. "You wanna go, huh? I can assure you with all of my confidence that Kiri-chan is twice that of the twins' cuteness put together. In fact, my daughter is the very _definition _of cute. All else fades in comparison! I can _mathematically _prove this to you!"

"Yeah? But who's the one with the poi's, huh? Can Kiri-chan do that?"

"Ugh..." Shintaro reels as though hit by a heavy attack, "K-Kiri-chan doesn't need a cliche verbal tic to be cute! That's a crutch, I say! She by herself is enough!"

"You two," Shigure says with a dangerous smile on her face, "can we please stop comparing such an arbitrary quality? They are all wonderful children. I understand you two are siblings, but please..."

We salute her. "Yes'm."

Yuudachi, Yuudahachi, Sandachi, and Kirisame are already prancing about on the grass field next to the playground with the dogs while Marisa the cat tip-toes over to the big sakura tree that's in the middle of the field. I don't know why we even bother putting the leashes on Ishii and Hisashi - we never really end up using those leashes properly anyway.

I spy Marisa the cat, upon reaching the sakura tree, meow at someone sitting at the base of it. The lady pets Marisa, stroking her ears, and Marisa curls up next to the lady. I smile - it's Harusame.

"Oh, it's Harusame!" Shigure also notices Harusame resting underneath the tree with her cat.

"Yuudachi, did you see Harusame over there?" I call out to my wife as she's chasing our daughters around amidst our puppies also chasing all of them so that it looks like everyone's chasing everyone else. People who are walking and exercising along the trails and walkways around the field gaze at the scene that my family is making. We're a common sight around this park.

"Huh? Harusame-chan!?" Yuudachi looks up, her hair flaps perking about in search of her ship sister.

"Behind you."

My wife turns around and spots Harusame, who lifts a shy hand and waves.

"Ah, Harusame-chan!" Yuudachi waves both of her arms cheerfully as ever. Some things about her will never change, not even as an adult, but when Yuudachi takes a step towards Harusame at the sakura tree, she immediately gets tackled around her waist by our two daughters, who, with their combined strength, take their mother down onto the grass, and the puppies shriek and howl with excitement and start jumping onto the dogpile of poi themselves. Kirisame simply sits down next to them and watches her aunt nearly suffocate underneath all the poi.

"Aren't you gonna help your wife, there?" my brother advises me. "She looks like she's having a hard time."

I grimace. "She'll be fine. That's what I have to go through on a nightly basis."

"What, a dogpile?"

"Something like that."

Leaving my wife to sort out the mess, we join Harusame at the sakura tree. She gives us all a warm smile, the same kind of serene smile that Shigure is capable of.

"Colonel," Harusame formally salutes me as we sit down next to her and Marisa the cat hops onto Harusame's lap. "How nice of you to join me - I really appreciate it."

"I mean, it's superb weather out. Coming here was a no-brainer," I chuckle, setting down the boxes of doughnuts in the middle. "Where's Tangan-san and the kids?"

"Ah...he...they're here. They went off to go get some drinks for us...from the vending machine over there." Harusame points behind us towards the direction of the small baseball park, where there're a couple of vending machines that sell drinks and snacks.

"Perfect, we've brought doughnuts for everyone, thanks to my wife 'n kids," I announce. "Feel free to take some."

"Oh...thank you, Colonel," Harusame smiles again. She sets the book she's been reading on the grass next to her and puts away the glasses. "Even to this day, you always...give us something to enjoy."

"And even to this day, you still insist on calling me 'Lieutenant' or 'Colonel'," I smirk. "Tangan-san's gonna get mad at me if he hears you calling me that."

Harusame giggles. "I will talk to him. He always...acts so defensive and protective of me whenever you come around, even though we've...all been married for this long by now."

We all chuckle and watch Yuudachi pick up Sandachi and catapult her about twenty meters up into the air and catch her when she plunges back down. The twins love it when their mom tosses them up into the air like that, it's a good deal of fun. People used to think Yuudachi was a crazy mother for doing that, but it's happened so often that people around these parts are just used to it by now.

"It's...rare for us to meet like this without even planning," Harusame mentions. "Today must be...a special day."

"Just one 'a those days when things line up, I suppose," I shrug. None of us have taken a doughnut yet, since we're waiting for Harusame's husband and daughters to return and Yuudachi and the poi gang to come on over as well.

"How have your daughters been doing, Harusame?" Shigure asks gently.

"They've been...doing well. The navy scientists have...determined that they will not inherit my Abyssal genes," Harusame replies. "They are...fortunately unable to be passed down...specialized DNA."

I nod. "That's good. It was tough enough convincing the Navy that the Abyssals could join human society without a problem like the rest of the ship girls - we don't need another problem on our hands that'll have the Navy breathing down our backs again."

"Tough being a military man, eh, Colonel?" Shintaro pats me on the back.

"Aw, cut the stuff, you don't know anything, you nerd."

"Says the guy who works from home all day writing out bogus military reports..."

"I told you, they're not _military reports..."_

"Fine, customs and seaport deliveries..."

Suddenly, a pair of hands drop in front of my eyes and smack against them so that I can't see anything. A small voice pops behind me,

"Guess who?"

I grin, knowing who it is. "Haru-chan," I lift the small hands off my eyes and turn around to confirm my answer. Harukyu, Harusame's first daughter, laughs with delight and gives me a hug around my neck. "Whoa, whoa, easy there."

"Hey, hey, now, I thought I was looking forward to a relaxing weekend afternoon spent with my family at our favorite spot in town, and now I come back to find out I have to deal with you clowns?"

I look up, and we see Tangan-san, Harusame's husband, a tall, lanky man leading his second daughter, Haruni, by his side, carrying an armful of canned and bottled drinks. His real name is Tanagata, but because he lost the use of his right eye when he was a kid after a baseball accident, he goes around with gauze wrapped around his head to hide his nonfunctional eye, hence we call him "Tangan-san", or Mr. One Eye. Harusame met him at the company she got a job at after the war, and they became engaged. He's the protective husband type who eyes other men who approach his wife with suspicion, even me, even though Harusame's explained to him multiple times what our relationship's about. But at least he takes care of Harusame and his daughters faithfully, and he's still a decent guy, just a bit confrontational.

"What's up, Tangan-san," I wave hello at him, and he nods back at me and my brother. We've all spent enough time together that he's aware of who we are and doesn't have to worry about us making moves on Harusame, though he still acts like we would. He sits down with Haruni next to Harusame and hands her a bottle of oolong tea.

"Here, sweetie," he murmurs, and Harusame takes it with a smile. "Oh, doughnuts? I hope you didn't buy these to bribe me to talk to my wife for an hour."

"You know my relationship with your wife well enough to know that I don't need anything to get some quality conversation time with her," I smirk as I pick up one of the boxes of doughnuts and hand it to Tangan-san. Harukyu toddles over to Shigure, who plants a warm kiss on her forehead.

"Where's Hachi-chan and San-chan?" Harukyu asks, and Shigure points over to my family romping about in the field. Haryukyu instantly sprints over to join them, and Haruni watches her older sister run off with longing eyes to join them.

"Even so, she's not your subordinate anymore, she's my wife," Tangan-san says aggressively. "How many times have we been through this conversation?"

I open the next box of doughnuts and tell everyone to take one. "And how many times do I have to remind you that no matter what you or I say, your wife still insists on calling me 'Colonel'?" I point out to him.

"What does that matter? My wife can call you whatever she wants. That tells me nothing."

I just sigh out loud. "Well...I can't expect a civvie to understand what we'd been through. Sorry for imposing that expectation on you."

Tangan-san narrows his eyes at me. "What was that, you - "

"Senpai, please, now isn't the time..." Harusame says quietly, tugging on her husband's shirt. "We...came here to enjoy ourselves."

Tangan-san forces himself to soften up his expression. "Very well. Thanks for the doughnuts, though. Haruni, feel free to take one."

Haruni, the younger child sitting next to her mother on her other side, squeals with delight and picks up a chocolate doughnut with lots of candy sprinkles.

"Oiii, everyone, let's eat now!" my brother calls out to everyone, and they immediately race back to us. Knowing what to expect, Shigure and I quickly react and rip the boxes away before Sandachi crashes into the middle of our little circle underneath the sakura tree.

"H-Heeeeyyy, Haruni, you got the good one!" Harukyu cries, pointing an accusing finger at her younger sister, who looks up at her older sister in fright and presses her head against her mother's side, terrified that her precious chocolate doughnut is about to get stolen away. In the meanwhile, Sandachi has grabbed four doughnuts at once and has stuffed one of them whole into her mouth, which I still find hard to believe to this day.

"Haru-chan, don't...fight," Harusame says gently. "Look...there are plenty more. It's okay, Haruni...this one is yours."

Haruni nods, still frightened, nibbling nervously on her doughnut.

"Hey, Colonel, say 'aaaaah'!" Yuudachi leans over to me with a jelly doughnut in her hand. I know what she wants to do - she wants to feed me a doughnut, and I'm going to end up with jelly smeared all over my face and shirt.

"No, no no, that's not happening," I say quickly, shaking my head frantically. "Remember the last time you did this? I got - "

"Awww, you just got a little bit of jelly on your shirt, what's so bad about that, poi?"

"It wasn't _a little bit_, it was literally dripping all over the place!"

"Just say 'ah', Colonel! Here!"

And Yuudachi just shoves the doughnut into my face, right into my nose. The raspberry jelly inside splurts out with the impact and seeps up my nostrils and splatters onto my face, and everyone laughs.

I should've seen this coming.


	6. A Sprinkle Mustache

Harusame has a quite a history.

She was one of the three ship girls I was in charge of back during the war. Harusame, too, like Shigure and Yuudachi, shared some degree of affection for me when I was just a lieutenant. Like Shigure, she was a sweet girl with flaming pink hair. I really liked her pink hair, even though I'm not someone who digs blonde or flashy colored hair (yeah, look at me now, married to a blonde girl who might've been American or European originally, but we don't know Yuudachi's original nationality anymore, so...). She was like a more upbeat, more optimistic Shigure, though sometimes that got in the way of her judgment.

However, about halfway into the war, Harusame was captured by the Abyssals. I remember the day when our fleet came back to base, and when I realized Harusame wasn't with Shigure and Yuudachi when they returned, I asked where she was. They were both in tears and reported that she had been killed in combat. I'll refrain from giving the exact details, but at the time, we were under the impression that Harusame was lost at sea.

Lo and behold, about six months later, our naval district began receiving reports from other fleets from other naval districts - reports of an Abyssal ship girl who uncannily resembled our lost Harusame. So I convinced our base's Admiral to send our fleet out specifically to track down this alleged Abyssal who looked like Harusame. It took us another four months and nearly two dozen sorties to finally find Destroyer Hime, as her name was after her Abyssalization. Upon beating her to submission and capturing her, the fleet returned "Warusame", as her nickname became, and Navy scientists began a long and extensive reverse engineering and rehabilitation program to turn Harusame back to normal. And that, too, took yet another seven months. Essentially, Harusame was out of the war from our fleet for almost half the time.

But once rehabilitated, Harusame became the single most powerful destroyer in the entire Japanese Navy. The rehabilitation had restored her humanity and her human memories from before her capture by the Abyssals, but it couldn't remove everything that was Abyssalized about her. So she kept her Abyssal strength - and, to my disappointment and sadness, Harusame, who lost her vivid pink hair because of her Abyssalization, didn't regain her original pink hair either, and her hair stayed albino white with a tint of deep purple. She still has that kind of hair to this day - we tried to see if dying her hair pink would work, but her hair is dye-resistant, and the pink redo just washed right off. So much for that. On top of that, Harusame's Abyssalization process removed her legs for some reason that none of us ever found out.

But Harusame's rehab and reentry into the war was one of the biggest reasons why we eventually won the war. By keeping her Abyssal knowledge, Harusame was able to help our Admirals pinpoint a series of decisive strikes against all the Abyssal bases that we knew about and didn't know about until Harusame revealed them to us.

Harusame today still looks a lot like what she looked like after we'd captured her back, just more grown up with the same gentle expression as Shigure. She has pure white skin now, a sign of her Abyssalization, and as mentioned, she has white hair with a purplish tint towards the bottom. She recovered most of her original gentle personality, but her upbeat cheerfulness was forever lost, and instead she's since adopted a more gentle expression and personality, like Shigure, as mentioned. Since she lost her legs, I had prosthetic ones constructed specifically for her so that she wouldn't be treated as a disabled person in Japanese society, which, admittedly, has a pretty bad track record with handicapped accessibility. She also developed a bit of a stammer, nothing significant to the point where her speech is heavily impeded, but she tends to pause randomly in the middle of a sentence. That, and she _never _raises her voice above a loud call. I've _never _heard her yell or scream after she came out of rehab. She used to have silver eyes when we first captured her from the Abyssals, but after rehab, they went back to being reddish pink again.

After the war, since it was highly unlikely that Harusame would reintegrate back into Japanese society again after what'd happened to her, I secured her a job at my brother's new contracting company that he formed right at the end of the war. I explained to him that Harusame was an associate at work who was looking to retire from service and go into a more normal career. So now my brother, because of my elaborate fabrications to get Harusame a normal job and life, thinks that Harusame is an albino lady who lost her legs at an early age due to complications from her albinism. So she's been working at my brother's firm for all these years, eventually becoming Senior Projects Manager, a fancy term for a position that means that Harusame is the second most important person in the firm, besides Shintaro. That's where she also met her husband, Tangan-san, or Tanagata Ryuu, which is his full name. Harusame called him "senpai" because at the time she joined the firm, Tangan-san held a higher position in the company than she did. Now, ironically, Harusame's the one with the higher position, though the two of them aren't actually that far apart on the firm's power hierarchy due to their seniorities. She still insists on calling him "Senpai", even after they got engaged and married. When I told Tangan-san that one of the reasons why I married Yuudachi was to hear her say "poi" all day, he, too, admitted to me that he wanted to hear Harusame call him senpai all the time.

We men sure have our weird fetishes.

"San-chan," Harukyu, Harusame's older daughter, pats Sandachi's shoulder as the two of them are sitting eating doughnuts, "lookie, lookie!"

Sandachi turns to Harukyu, and the latter dabs candy sprinkles onto her face, just underneath her nose.

"Sprinkle mustache!" Harukyu announces, and Sandachi explodes with laughter. Yuudahachi, Haruni, and Kiri-chan also look at Harukyu, and they all join in the fun.

Both of Harusame's daughters, like my twins, are named Harusame, officially. Because Harusame was once part of the enemy, the Navy wanted to keep a close eye on her after she was discharged after the war, so when her children were born, Navy officers who were part of the black ops project came to the hospital where she gave birth and clandestinely recorded them into the Navy databases. Unlike our children and Kiri-chan, Harusame's daughters were given ship numbers right away - DD-109 and DD-102. Hence, Haru-_kyu_ and Haru-_ni_.

Harukyu is the older one, as mentioned a thousand times by now, and she's quite the fiend. She's normally a sweet girl, rambunctious and active like Sandachi, but she has a meanly mischievous streak about her. She can play some dirty, dirty tricks that sometimes border on just plain rude or mean, but thankfully it's not all the time, only when she thinks she's been insulted by someone or if she's got good justification for doing so. She can be quite confrontational, but thankfully she's a child who subscribes to reason more often than not. You'd think that she wouldn't, for a child of her age, but she's easy to work with. She's a year younger than the twins. Both she and her younger sister haven't inherited Harusame's alleged albinism, thankfully, but Harukyu does have her mother's new white hair, but Harukyu's hair has a much more vivid purplish tint.

Haruni is a lot like Kiri-chan - they're both incredibly shy, but Haruni, unfortunately, is more prone to crying and being scared easily, and this sometimes causes Harukyu to pick on her younger sister with teasings and whatnot. I'm just hoping it's because Haruni's two years younger than the twins and Kiri-chan. She has Harusame's old pink hair, which I'm pretty happy to see back, but she's got her mother's silver eyes. And at an angle in low lighting, it _almost _looks as though Haruni's got no pupils, which is really freaky to some people if they don't see the pupils right away.

I watch Kirisame and play with Haruni's pink hair. Kiri-chan and Haruni get along very well together, naturally, because of their similar dispositions. It's like they've sensed each other's meekness and are happy to see that they have something in common. Kiri-chan is also rather infatuated with Haruni's pink hair, like she can't get over the fact that her friend's hair color is _pink_. Then again, lots of people can't believe that Haruni's hair is naturally pink, either. Especially in a country where black is the dominant hair color anyway.

"So when exactly is this 'navy session' that my wife keeps telling me about?" Tangan-san says to me as he licks some chocolate off his fingers from a doughnut. "She was talking to me about it during dinner the other night."

"Ah, right. So every summer, the Navy wants the children of the members of the program to participate in a naval preparation program," I explain.

Tangan-san frowns deeply in disapproval. It's no secret that he holds a deep mistrust of any military organization, and because he'd only just known about Harusame's true identity when their first daughter was born, it was like a bittersweet time for him.

"But why? Why are they forcing my daughters to participate in this combat-readiness program?" he asks. "That's absurd. I mean, I understand that they would want to keep tabs on my wife, seeing what she'd been through. But our daughters are innocent. I really don't like the fact that the Navy's trying to dictate what kinds of lives my daughters are going to have."

I shake my head sadly. "Sorry, Tangan-san, but there's not much I can do about it either. I agree; this isn't something the Navy should be able to do, but it is what it is. You can rest assured that it won't be anything harsh or tough on the girls. Our daughters - " I motion to the twins and Kiri-chan - "have already been to this a couple years now. They see if our daughters have inherited our wives' abilities as ship girls."

"Oh..." Tangan-san twists off the cap of a bottle of cola. "So it's like, how should say, a little summer camp where the kids go and see if they can fight."

"If you want to put it as bluntly as possible, yes, that wouldn't be incorrect."

Tangan-san twists his lips as he takes a sip from his bottle. "Mmm...at least I can trust that you're not beating around the bush. And what if they find out that the girls are indeed capable of combat?"

"Nothing's in verdict so far. We don't know if the Navy wants to eventually take them in into a full-fledged combat readiness program when they're older or not, so for now, the girls don't really need to worry about anything."

We watch Yuudahachi, who's stuffed herself with doughnuts and Pocari Sweat, curl up next to Hisashi, our Shiba Inu puppy, who, in turn, curls up his tail around the back of Yuudahachi's head and proceeds to go to sleep with her. Sandachi is telling an enthusiastic Harukyu about her wonderful, fantastic adventures she had with her sister about this one time when she and Yuudahachi explored a huge field of sunflowers by themselves. Harukyu, since her family doesn't keep pets, is a huge dog lover and sits with Ishii, our Labrador puppy, in her lap. Ishii is busy licking the sprinkles of her sprinkle mustache off her face, which Harukyu doesn't mind, since she loves Ishii. She's even managed to whisk Ishii away while we weren't looking to her own house, and her dad had to return him back to us. Haruni, who is a cat lover herself, is playing some sort of hand game with Marisa the cat, who lifts her paws at Haruni's hands to tap them away, much to Haruni's amusement. All the while, Kiri-chan is _still _playing with Haruni's hair.

"Tch," Tangan-san says bitterly, "looks like this whole summer program's going to be a pain. When is it again?"

"Hey, hey, Tangan-san, be grateful I'm even telling you this. Technically, I'm not allowed to tell you about it at all in accordance with program jurisdiction," I remind Harusame's husband, "but I don't need to care because of my rank and seniority in the Navy, especially the black ops program. And as for when it is, it's two weeks from now. Hopefully you didn't have any plans then."

"Fortunately, no...but still..."

Harusame puts a gentle hand on her husband's shoulder.

"Senpai, please don't...worry. From...what I heard from Yuudachi-nee-san and...Shigure-nee-san, the program is...supposed to be fun for the girls. And...they'll be able to meet the other children of...the other ship girls, like...me," she says slowly.

Tangan-san sighs. He's pretty weak to his wife's words. Even though I don't like Tangan-san's personality, I can't bring myself to hate him or dislike him much because he's just like me and my brother in that he, too, like us, loves his wife and his daughters.


	7. Carriaged

I take the last glazed doughnut from the very last box of doughnuts that we've bought, stand up with it, and step out into the sun, outside of the cool shade of the sakura tree.

"Okay, girls, I've got the last one!" I announce, which instantly gets every one of our little girls' attention. Their cute little faces all zoom towards me like a field of sunflowers snapping at the sun. "We're gonna go on the Tour de Japan! Whoever's the first one to catch me at the end gets the last doughnut!" And with that, I sprint away to embark on the little race we've come to call the "Tour de Japan".

By the way, just as a warning, no sane father in his right mind should attempt to do this. I'm the only qualified father in the world who can pull off a life-threatening stunt like this because I've survived multiple attempts on my life from the overdose of Poi.

The girls start squealing and barking, which also gets the dogs' attention too, so no sooner than two and a half seconds into my run, I feel a large bullet in the form of a screaming Sandachi pummel square into my back, trying to take me down. Sandachi very often confuses "race" with "hunt", and whether she does this on purpose or not, I've never quite understood. Maybe she just doesn't care what's happening or what she's supposed to do and just does whatever she feels like. But being the strong father I am who knows the strength of the Poi vested into my twin daughters, I forge on, running with Sandachi dragging her legs along the grass with Yuudahachi and Harukyu close behind and Haruni and Kirisame toddling after us with the dogs, who are also barking their tails off.

Allow me to explain the "Tour de Japan": the grass field is roughly the same size as the nearby baseball field. It's just an amateur baseball field, nowhere near the size of an actual professional baseball field, but even still, it's fairly sizable. The Tour de Japan takes place all on this grass field, and the sakura tree where we've been hanging out and relaxing and having a doughnut picnic is in the very center of it. To participate in the Tour de Japan, one must run from the sakura tree down south to the vending machines from which Tangan-san got the drinks, around the dirt path that leads to the fountains where all the birds in the neighborhood like to hang out during the day for the cool water, then down the jogging path that borders the grass field all the way around, back to the vending machines, all the way across the grass field through the sakura tree, back around to the fountains, to the bleachers that are past the fountains on the right side of the baseball field, all the way around the baseball field, down the road that leads to the playground next to the grass field, to the outer jogging path of the grass field, and then back to the sakura tree. And that's the Tour de Japan.

I remember when we first made up this race, I was able to beat my twins at it simply because I was just making up really weird turns along the way. But somehow, the twins remembered this, so the race stuck around. We got Kirisame and the other girls to join in too, but really only Sandachi and Yuudahachi finish it, with Harukyu being able to finish consistently as well, since the other girls have nowhere near the energy as these three do.

But the problem is, almost every single time, Yuudachi decides it's a good idea for _her _to join too, and she's by far the fastest among us all. So about five seconds into the race, Yuudachi outruns me with those long, rapid strides of hers, and Sandachi, excited by the sight of her mother also participating, lets go of my waist just as we hit the dirt path and starts bolting at full speed after her. We can hear Shigure and Harusame cheering us on from the sakura tree, and soon it just becomes a family footrace with me, Sandachi, and Yuudahachi. Yuudachi just pulls ahead with those augmented legs of hers that lets her run far faster than any regular human can.

"Yuudachi, you don't count!" I yell after her, but she isn't listening.

On the way back to the vending machines, I see Kirisame sitting on the path in front of the vending machine, breathing pretty hard. It looks like she's given up, so I slow down to pick her up.

"Let's finish together, okay?" I tell my niece, who just gives me a tired smile. Yuudahachi and Sandachi take advantage of the situation and pull forward, and with Kirisame riding on my shoulders, I know I won't finish with them. But I finish the Tour de Japan regardless, and Yuudachi bounds up to me, all proud that she finished.

"I finished first, Colonel!" Yuudachi's face sparkles even in the daytime with her pure, unadulterated happiness. "Now I want that last doughnut!"

"Hey, hey, now, you're an adult, a mother of two, no less," I tell her through my hard panting to catch my breath. "Aren't you supposed to leave the last one for the kids?"

"But I want the doughnut!" Yuudachi whines. Honestly, I don't know how Yuudachi's been such a good mother to our kids so far with a mentality like that. "Speaking of which, where is it? You had it in your hand when we started, right?"

I point up to Kirisame on my shoulders, and her lips are frosted with a bit of glaze.

"It's too late; I already gave it to her," I tell my family, and Kirisame smiles a bit of a guilty smile.

Yuudachi's hair flaps press down like a dejected dog's, and she starts slapping my chest with her hands.

"Meanie! Liar! Meanie! Liar!" she wails, accusing me of breaking the rules. "You promised, you promised!"

To make my life worse, Sandachi and Yuudahachi, also disappointed by the unfair loss of the doughnut, also tug on the bottom of my shirt.

"Yeah, Dad's a meanie, meanie, meanie!" Yuudahachi cries.

"You gotta buy us more when we go back home then, Tou-san!" Sandachi also adds fuel to the fire.

"I can't, we have to eat dinner properly when we go back home - " I try to defend myself, but my family of Poi's isn't having any of it, so I quickly hand Kirisame back to her mother to get her out of the crossfire. Then, Sandachi thinks it's a good idea to start tugging on my shirt even harder, and with her strength that's far more than what a six-year-old should have, she successfully drags me backwards onto the ground, and I fall flat on my back on the grass. It's at that exact moment when my family, including our two puppies, somehow unanimously decide that it's time for a Poi pile, like they're all hooked up to the same hive mind, or the Poi Mind, as I've come to call it. So thus, Yuudachi hurls herself onto me, her breasts pressing down on my chest first, and then Sandachi and Yuudahachi fwumps onto any part of my torso or upper body that their mother isn't covering. Ishii and Hisashi start jumping on my legs like they're trampolines, barking like mad.

"Yuudachi, girls, don't do this to m - "

The flood of Poi is too much. Yuudachi readjusts her position so that her chest smashes into my face, and Sandachi throws her rear down onto my stomach, further torturing me with Poi. To top things off, Yuudachi starts yelling "Poi! Poi! Poooooi!" and gets our daughters on the Poi train too, and our puppies keep shrieking and barking all the way. Even Shigure's dog Tameichi-san, the St. Bernard puppy, walks over and starts licking my face.

"I'm really glad that I'm not in your shoes, Tokashiki-san," Tangan-san calls out loudly so that I can hear him, "that looks like a living hell."

_"THAT'S BECAUSE IT IS!" _I yell back, over the squealing and cries of my family of Poi's. "DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD IT IS FOR ME TO HOLD ALL THESE POI'S?!"

"That's _your _problem, isn't it?" my brother calls back. "See, Tangan-san, we're the responsible ones. We raise our children properly, and they're nice, obedient little girls. You reap what you sow, you know."

"At least you understand. Well said."

_"ARE YOU TWO CONSPIRING AGAINST ME OR WHAT?! ARE YOU TWO JEALOUS? I BET YOU ARE! YOU'RE JEALOUS THAT YOUR OWN WIVES AND DAUGHTERS DON'T LOVE YOU LIKE THIS!" _I manage to sit up, somehow finding the strength in me to lift Yuudachi up off me too in the process. "You two aren't man enough to handle a wife like mine and kids like mine! If we swapped places for a day, neither 'a you would survive until the end of the day! The fact that I've been able to raise my daughters to the point is proof that I am, in fact, more of a man than both of you combined!"

Surprisingly, Yuudachi comes to my aid. "Yeah, my husband's the best husband in the world, poi!" Yuudachi barks defensively, putting the "poi" for extra emphasis. "He deals with everything that I throw at him, and he puts up with everything our kids do, too!"

"Hey, hey, Yuudachi, that makes it sound like you've _intentionally _been screwing with me..."

Yuudachi unapologetically turns to me and grins. "Because it's funny to see your reactions whenever I jump on you, poi!"

"Idiot, Yuudachi, you weren't supposed to say that to me!"

Shintaro's just trying his very best not to start laughing out loud, because Shigure is throwing daggers at him with her eyes, and Tangan-san just rolls his eyes, like he's just saying, yeah, whatever.

"Tou-san, Tou-san!" Sandachi looks up at me.

"Yeah, Sandachi?"

"Can we do the horse carriage? Please, poi?!"

My heart sinks. The horse carriage is something the twins do that involves them dragging me by the back of the collar of my shirt and running with me in tow around the grass field a couple times, depending on how enthusiastic they are.

"Yeah, that's a good idea, let's do it, poi!" Yuudahachi also agrees, cheering.

"No, it's _not _a good idea, I'm gonna die!" I protest.

"So moe, you're gonna die?" Shintaro finally laughs, silenced quickly by Shigure's slap on his head.

"No, I'm gonna die 'cause it's actually dangero - "

But when the twins make up their mind about something, they won't let go of it. So they place Marisa the cat on my stomach, who just purrs at me, like she's asking me what the heck's going on, grab my collar, and start horse carriaging me around the grass field amidst my screams for help to my wife, but Yuudachi just waves at me and goes,

"Have a nice trip, poi!"

_**"YUUDACHI, WHY ARE YOU LEAVING ME TO DIEEEEEEEEEE..."**_

So I'm forced to spend the next five minutes getting dragged around the grass field at the hands of my own daughters, with the puppies chasing after me, nipping at my shoes while the others watch me with amusement.

It takes a lot of commitment and willpower from a man to marry and raise a family. I like to think that the moment a boy becomes a father, that's the moment when he also becomes an adult. Obviously that's just a very general way to put things, but it's undeniable that having a child brings a lot of responsibility to the father. However, I just want to point out that raising a family of Poi's is much different than raising a normal family, because you have to deal with your own kids doing something like this to you every weekend.

But even still...

_I REGRET NOTHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING_


	8. The Poi Philharmonic

"Here...and you here...there we go...okay, this's good. I think."

We've come back to our house after our sortie to the park. I took some time to change clothes because of all the dirt and grass that got smeared all over the back of my shirt from Sandachi's latest Solomon Merry-Go-Round. We invited everyone to our place for a friendly family dinner, so while Shigure, Harusame, and Yuudachi prance about in the kitchen getting started on making an early dinner, my brother and Tangan-san join me in the living room as I place the kids and the dogs and Marisa the cat around me in a circle, with the exception of Harukyu and Haruni, who sit with their daddy on the couch, since they're not familiar with the Poi Philharmonic.

"This 'Poi Philharmonic' thing sounds really sketchy..." Tangan-san says worriedly as I get on my knees and stand up on them like an orchestra conductor. The kids and the dogs and the cat look up at me, and they already have an idea of what they'll need to do.

"Oh, c'mon, that's like saying you don't like to have fun!" my brother just laughs, since he knows what'll happen. He enjoys the regular performances of the Poi Philharmonic.

"Yeah, ust watch for a second. I swear Harukyu-chan and Haruni-chan will love it and wanna join in!" I grin at Tangan-san reassuringly.

"Yeah...no thanks," he replies cautiously. I think he thinks that we're about to pull out the Candid Camera on him or something, which would actually be hilarious if we did.

But without further ado, I clap my hands once to get my orchestra's attention.

"Okay, girls, we'll be performing the Second Poi Symphony, movement four. You girls ready?"

Yuudahachi and Sandachi both cheer wildly, while Kirisame gives a more reserved grin. The pupies, riled up by the twins' cheering, also bark and scream in anticipation, and Marisa the cat purrs. I raise my hands like a conductor lifting his baton, or whatever that stick thing conductors wave around.

"Poi Symphony...? Movement four...?" Tangan-san rolls his eyes. "It's _that _organized?"

"Well...not really, he just makes up random numbers," my brother remarks.

Recognizing my hand movements, the kids tense up their backs. I jab quickly at the girls and the puppies, and every time I point at them, they sing (or scream) out a different note of "Poi" each time. So what ends up happening is that our living room gets sand-blasted with a horribly mismatched and mistoned but still teeth-rottingly adorable cacophony of Poi's, barks, screams, and meows.

"Poi!" says Yuudahachi.

"Pooooooooooi!" cries Sandachi.

"Woof!" barks Ishii.

"Eeeeeeeeeee!" screams Hisashi.

"Nyaaaa..." purrs Marisa.

"Poi!"

"Poi poi poi!"

"Poi!"

"Arf!"

"Poooooi! Poi poi poi!"

"Nyaaaa?"

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"

"Poi!"

And so on and so forth. Two Poi's, a Lab, a Shiba Inu, a St. Bernard, and a tabby, all adding their own personal twist to the arching sound of music.

"This's both terrifying and annoying at the same time," Tangan-san remarks with a horrified grimace on his face.

"That's why you should get your kids to join in, too!" I quickly call, glancing over to Harusame's kids too while not stopping my conducting to keep the Poi symphony rolling.

"I don't want my perfectly good kids to be ruined by terrible singing and conducting! Clearly, this is corrupting the youth!"

"That's what _you _think! Now shut it and get'cher kids over here, pronto! C'mon, Harukyu-chan, Haruni-chan! Look how much fun they're having!"

Just as planned, Harukyu and Haruni are squirming and fidgeting on the couch. Harukyu especially looks supremely jealous of all the fun that her friends are appearing to have, singing off-key and rolling around, screaming and laughing their heads off in amusement at just how ridiculous they're all starting to sound. This's how the Poi Symphonies usually end - in mad fits of laughter and fur and hair.

"No, you two, you are _not _getting in on that," Tangan-san says very sternly, putting his hand out in front of his daughters.

"B-But, but, but, but Daaaaaaad!" Harukyu protests immediately, "it's not fair for them to be doing something fun and I can't!"

"Not fair..." Haruni also mumbles, frowning sadly. She bobs her fists up and down really slowly as though she's trying to emphasize her point.

"No means no!" Tangan-san refuses to give into the pleading of his daughters.

"Awww, c'mon, some being such a hardliner, you're not even the Colonel here!" I laugh at Tangan-san. "Just give up already! One of us! One of us!"

The commotion we're making draws out Harusame and Yuudachi, who peek out from the kitchen to see what's going on.

"Oooooh! The Poi Symphony!" Yuudachi instantly recognizes our activity and bounds over like a bloodhound to join the fun, further confirming my theory that my family is interconnected through this legendary Poi hive mind.

"Poi Symphony...?" Harusame smiles as she approaches us. "Ah...Shigure has...told me about this..."

"Harusame, get your husband to let your daughters to join their friends here!" I call over to Harusame, still jabbing at the puppies and kids and cat, who still keep the symphony going. "Quick! Sandachi's giggling too much, so she's gonna break the symphony! We need reinforcements asap!"

Harusame frowns a bit at Tangan-san. "Senpai...what's wrong...?" she asks with concern. "Why...don't you let the kids play...?"

"Well, no...it's - it's just, look at this!" Tangan-san stutters as he motions to the dogpile in the middle of our living room. "This - this isn't _play, _it's madness!"

But Harusame, fortunately, isn't having any of her husband's nonsense.

"I'm...very disappointed in you, Senpai," Harusame crosses her arms.

Tangan-san's greatest weakness is his wife, an exploit everyone knows. "Fine, fine!" he groans, throwing up his hands. "Do what you want..."

Harukyu and Haruni immediately bounce off the couch and skid across the room to join the Poi Symphony. Harukyu dives for Hisashi and giggles madly as she rolls around with him, and this prompts the end of the Poi Symphony, as the puppies and the girls break roles with my conducting and just start screaming and giggling on their own.

"And that, ladies and gentlemen," Shintaro declares, "is the the Poi Philharmonic!"

The slap of Tangan-san facepalm is drowned out immediately by a torrent of Poi's.


	9. Mikan

"So how's the company doing, Shintaro?" I ask my younger brother. We've already eaten dinner, though cleaning up has taken nearly just as long as the time it has taken us to eat because the twins decided to go ham in a food fight, and instead of breaking it up, Yuudachi made it worse by participating in it. Rest in pieces our kitchen and dining room - but that's been taken care of now, so we're all chilling in the living room again, watching some evening television. They're showing a three-hour special on luxury cruise liners on NHK, and not surprisingly, the children are captivated by it. It's the longest time in a long time that I can remember that they've all been this quiet together, and their eyes are glued to our big flatscreen TV. Yuudahachi and Haruni are sharing the custom-made yellow teddy bear with the same hair ribbon that the Pois all wear, using it as a kind of pillow to lay on their bellies on the floor to watch the TV, and the other girls are petting whatever pet has come up to them for some head pats and head rubs.

"Great. We've just gotten an influx of business this month - factories and stores in Tokyo here've been ordering lots of supplies and merchandise from China, so we're getting a lot more commerce coming into the bay," Shintaro explains. His company is a customs forwarding office, or something like that, I'm not sure what the official title of his line of business is. Basically, he and his company (which includes Harusame and her husband Tangan-san) handle all kinds of commercial imports and exports going in and out of Tokyo Bay, and they're one of many companies who handle stuff like that, but mostly they specialize in ocean trafficking.

"You sure it's not going to take too much time away from the kids?" I nod at Kirisame, who is cuddling up with Marisa the cat, who paws gently at her chin and purring playfully. I spy Kirisame giving the cat a cute smile.

"No, it won't, don't worry. Did you forget already? I moved my office from Tokyo to home when we had Kirisame so I could help Shigure with her." Shintaro puts his hand over Shigure's and grins a playful grin of his own at his wife. "Oh, dear me, what would my wife have done without me if I didn't move my office..."

Shigure says nothing, looking away from her husband in embarrassment. I can imagine that she isn't willing to admit that she really appreciated what Shintaro did for her as a mother.

"It was...the same for us too," Harusame agrees as well. "Shintaro-san, you remember when...Senpai asked permission for pregnancy leave? You asked him, 'you're pregnant, Tangan-san!?'"

All the adults laugh, with the sole exception of, of course, Tangan-san, who just facepalms.

"Must we _really _bring that up?" Tangan-san sighs.

"Sure, why not?" I shrug, grinning with amusement as well.

"But why, is my question..."

"Because it's funny."

"It sure isn't so funny to me."

"That's 'cause you need to loosen up a bit more!" my younger brother just laughs. "C'mon, you can't be so uptight all the time!"

Harusame also puts her hands on her husband's buff shoulder. "Senpai, it's...not so bad to have fun, is it?"

Tangan-san's tough-guy front crumbles before his wife's beaming expression. "Guh...okay, okay..."

Yuudachi passes me a completely peeled mikan from a basket of mikan that she and Shigure have spent the last fifteen minutes or so peeling for us. The basket gets passed around as the girls take a mikan each and start eating them while still watching TV. I watch the kids eat, since I'm not finding the program on TV to be particularly gripping as the kids do. They all have their favorite ways to eat the tangerines - Yuudahachi eats them by peeling off one piece at a time and popping each piece in her mouth; Sandachi splits hers in half and rips each mikan piece off with her teeth, one by one or sometimes two at once; Kirisame loves the mikan juice but doesn't like all the white peelings, so she spends _forever _carefully extracting each one with her fingernails, and once she's done with that, she carefully puts a piece of mikan in her mouth and sucks all the juice out; Harukyu just gobbles up the mikan, shoving in two or three or even four at a time; and Haruni likes to put exactly two in her mouth at once, one on both sides of her teeth so that when she chews, the juice seeps out and fills her taste buds at the same time.

You might think this is creepy for me to know all of this, but as a Navy officer with tons of time on his hands just hanging out with his children, I have quite the sharp observational skills that let me know things that most dads don't know about their kids when they're growing up. So I think it's totally normal.

The program then comes to a close, and when NHK prepares to put its next program on air, Sandachi twirls around on the floor and rolly-pollies her way over to me, bumping her arm against my knees.

"Tou-san, Tou-san!" she pipes up, "can we go on a cruise, poi? Please, poi? Poi?"

"A cruise?" I can't help but just laugh. "San-chan, I don't think you understand just how expensive cruises on luxury liners are..."

Sandachi starts whining like usual, which is what she does whenever she's told she can't get what she wants.

"B-But, but, Tou-saaaaaan," she elongates her voice, flailing her arms slowly around too for added emphasis, "a cruuuuuuise! A cruise, poooooi!"

"A cruise looks fun, poi!" Yuudahachi adds with a bright smile. My goodness, that smile makes me feel like my teeth are rotting off my jaws from the excessive amounts of sugar it produces. It's like she knows that Tangan-san has been a salt factory tonight, being salty about all the times we've been using him as the butt of our jokes, so she's counteracting it by becoming a sugar factory and producing enough sugar to give us all diabetes.

"Aw, c'mon, not you too, Hachi-chan. Daddy isn't rich, he's doing all he can to give you everything else you want!"

Sandachi's realized that I'm not really being sold on the idea of a cruise, so she clambers onto my crossed legs and puts her hands around my neck, gazing up into my eyes reaaaaaaal close, like a puppy standing up for a doggie treat. She's going to use her deadliest weapon, something I've come to call the Poi Persuader.

"Pwweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease...?" Sandachi whimpers.

In any comedy anime, there's usually that one cutesy-girl archetype who always makes everyone else wet their pants because of just how sweet and cute they are, for various reasons depending on the anime. Sandachi, even though she's not that archetype, is trying to usurp it for a single occasion like this in order to convince me to take them on a cruise. She uses her Poi Persuader as her most powerful tool to get what she wants by turning her eyes into tearful puppy-dog eyes that look like they're about to cry an ocean of salt if she doesn't get what she wants, and to the eyes of her target, she becomes enveloped in this haze of sparkles and rainbows. That's what I'm seeing right now - my cute little younger twin daughter, whimpering in my face, trying to guilt-trip me so hard that I fall for her plan. Usually, I just like seeing my daughters being cute and diabetes-inducing, so I give them what they want, so it's conditioned them, Sandachi especially, into thinking that they can be spoiled as much as they want, so long as they know which buttons to press. But this time, I put my foot down on it.

"Now, now, a cruise is fine and all, but I know something that's even more fun," I whisper sweet nothings into my daughter's ear, gently rubbing her head just the way she loves it - right hand around the base of her head, fingers scratching the top of her nape, where her hairline starts, and left hand around the side of her head, pinching her hair flap and rubbing ever so gently. Sandachi loves it when her parents pet her that way, and it's an instant tranquilizer.

"A-Aahhhhhh...p-p-pooooooiiiii..." Sandachi purrs, like a dog or cat that gets petted just the right way, and she curls up on my lap. "S-Something...m-more fuuuuunnnn...?"

"Yep. Maybe I'll tell you what it is one day," I grin, and with that, Sandachi stretches out her arms and mouth in a huge yawn and drops dead asleep. I flash my wife a victorious grin. "Works every time!"

"Don't tell me you do that to your own wife and kids all the time...?" Shintaro shakes his head like he's disappointed with me. "I can't even...geez...Yuudachi, surely he doesn't...?"

But he stops himself short when he realizes that Yuudachi is gazing at her own daughter with utmost jealousy.

"You have to give me one of those tonight when we go to bed too, alright?" she pouts at me.

"Okay, okay, I will, calm down..." I say quickly to reassure her. Shigure and Harusame just giggle while Tangan-san and Shintaro stare in a mixed facade of horror and amazement. Then, the kids, having seen Sandachi yawn, curl up, and go to sleep, follow suit like a domino track, and they all yawn and curl up with each other and fall asleep. Yuudahachi comes to join her twin sister at my lap, Kirisame then comes over too to join her friends, Haruni comes to join Kirisame, and Harukyu, not wanting to be the odd one out, also clambers over and hugs her younger sister.

"Ah, well, there goes the dogpile," Shintaro remarks, chewing on some mikan as we watch the kids fall asleep right here in the living room.

"Well...it is late, after all," Shigure notes, glancing at the clock on the wall above the TV. "We should start heading home soon. Especially for Harusame's and Tangan-san's sake, their house is a bit further away, near the park."

"That's true..." Yuudachi agrees, but when she looks at the kids, her eyes widen, which means that she's seriously debating whether or not she should join the kids in their little nap. And before I can say a single word, Yuudachi herself, too, dives for me and fwumps me down against the living room carpet and uses me as a body pillow and goes straight to sleep. "Oyasumi-poi~"

"Yuudachi!? Yuudachi!" I call as loudly as I can without waking up the kids, but it's too late - Yuudachi's knocked herself cold and is breathing into my ear, which tickles, _a lot._ "Uh, mayday, mayday, we have an issue here, we have a destroyer pile-up on aisle four, we need maintenance crews and clean-up crews on the ground floor asap!" I call out in a mock emergency voice.

"But...we don't have any...maintenance crews on hand here..." Harusame softly informs me.

"Well, that's great, 'cause that means I can't move. At all." I roll my eyes. "Yuudachi, oh for crying out loud, _you shouldn't be imitating your own kids half the time!"_

But Yuudachi doesn't budge. She's already too far gone. My wife is an amazing person sometimes, for all the wrong reasons.

"Here, don't forget these guys. Hey, Ishii, Hisashi, go get 'im!" my younger brother takes the girls' teddy bear and tosses it over to me, and it punts it me in the face, and our Shiba Inu and Lab puppies toddle over to me and curl up with me and my wife, and they, too, go to sleep. Pretty soon Marisa the cat also thinks it's a good idea to join Kirisame at my legs and curls up, and then finally Shigure's St. Bernard pup also joins our pups near my head. "So how does it feel to be covered in Poi, Tora-nii? Too much Poi?"

I can't help but chuckle.

"It's the best feeling in the world," I remark, "and there's no such thing as too much Poi."

"Tora-nii...my dear brother...you're such a great man..." Shintaro starts faking a tearful voice, like this's our last conversation together before I drown in a sea of Poi. "I won't ever be half the man you are...to be able to embrace the fire that is the Poi...we will remember your sacrifice, Tora-nii..."

"Cut the shenanigans and get the kids off before I really _do _start dying from too much Poi!"

"But you just said - "

_"As in, I'm gettin' dead legs right now and I need the kids off before I lose 'em!"_

That prompts the rest of the adults to help their kids off my lap and legs, leaving only my wife and kids and our two pups still lying on me. The realization that my existence in life has now been boiled down to being a body pillow for my family isn't as absurd as it sounds. I rather kind of like it.


	10. Kamo!

Since I put out some blankets for my family of Poi's because I didn't have the heart to wake them up to tuck them all properly into bed, I went straight to sleep with my girls after I sent everyone off. It had been a while since we'd all slept in the living room, and seeing that it's summer and nights usually get pretty humid, spending a night in the living room didn't sound so bad.

But Yuudachi and I were woken up by the doorbell ringing. I'm the kind of person who gets easily woken up by things like alarm clocks or doorbells or anything that dings or dongs...I guess, for a lack of a better term. Usually whenever I get woken up by the doorbell, my first thought is usually something like "Oh shoot, how long did I leave them waiting?"

So I bolt up to my feet as Yuudachi moans with sleepiness and slowly rubs her chin on the heads of our cuddled twin Poi's. I'm the only one in the house who's able to bolt up awake as soon as I wake up. And here I was thinking that usually it's the girls who're supposed to be like that...guess not.

"Coming, hold on!" I yell as I approach the door, since I need to change out of yesterday's clothes and hop into new ones. "Who is it?"

"It's Akitsushima, Lieutenant!" a familiar sweet voice calls. "I've brought breakfast, kamo!"

"Kamo!"

I feel my face brighten - Akitsushima was part of our detachment at Yokosuka, and she was a reliable and hardworking seaplane tender I quickly grew to like and respect. She, too, got married after our decommission and has since had a daughter of her own, who, not surprisingly, is also named Akitsushima, who is also a sweet and bright, energetic kid.

"Oh, okay!" I open the door for them, checking that it really is them through the peephole first, and Akitsushima and her daughter wave good morning to me.

"Lieutenaaaaaant~!" Akitsushima squeals, lunging forward for a hug, since it's been quite some time since we'd last seen each other - and by "quite some time", I mean four days. But before she glomps the daylights out of me, I put my hand in her face to block her.

"Hold on, hold on!" I try to explain the situation quickly. "We had Shigure and Harusame over for a little bit, and my entire family just fell asleep right there in the living room, so I need to take a shower and change clothes and everything - "

"Ohhhh~? But I don't mind a sweaty and dirty Lieutenant, uuueeheheheheheheheeeee~!" Akitsushima pulls on quite a naughty face and slowly creeps towards me with outstretched hands whose fingers are oscillating like the tendrils of coral. "I bet you smell absolutely _delicious, _kamo~!"

"Yuudachi!? Yuudachiiiii, you're about to get reverse netorare'd! Yuudachiiiiii?!" I scream in mock fright towards the living room, backing away from the seaplane tender. "A-Akitsushima, think about your child! Your daughter! She shouldn't be seeing something like this!"

"But Kaa-shan always talks about you, Lieutenant, kamo!" Chibi Akitsushima, as she's known to be called, pipes up.

"That's even worse! And also, I'm no longer 'Lieutenant', how many times do I have to tell you!"

Akitsushima pouts. "But I'm used to calling you Lieutenant, kamo. You're Colonel, now, right?"

"Yeah!"

"Eeeehhh...Colonel doesn't sound as cool as Lieutenant."

"That's not the problem here!"

Yuudachi's voice trails out real sleepily from the living room. "Fueeeehhh...? Akitsushimaaaa-chaaaaan, is'zat youuuuuu, poooooiiii...?"

"Yeah, Yuudachi-chan! We're here to visit, kamo!"

"Okaaayyyy...you can...take his clothes off...for his shower...poooooiiii-zzzzzzzz..." Yuudachi goes straight back to sleep mid-poi, and with official permission from my wife, Akitsushima's eyes turn into sharp sparkles of opportunity.

"Search and destroy initiative engaged," Akitsushima giggles with the creepy laughter of a sexual predator, and she's already drooling. "Akitsushima, sortieing!"

_"THIS ISN'T SOMETHING YOU SHOULD BE SORTIEING FOR!"_

* * *

So long story short, I ended up getting my upper clothes ripped off and my chest glomped. I swear that I am a totally faithful husband with absolutely no desire for adultery - it's just Akitsushima, even after all these years out of service and married to her own husband, has still nurtured a fondness for me that I don't know if I still understand completely. The worst part about it all's that my own wife, Yuudachi, seems to be totally okay with it. One of these days Akitsushima's going to take it a bit too far...but hopefully she has the sense not to do that. Kamo...

After taking a morning shower (most people in Japan don't take showers in the morning, but I'd developed a habit of it during my training as an officer since our physical training was in the morning), I change clothes and head into the kitchen to find, to my surprise, Yuudachi already in the middle of making breakfast together. Akitsushima was a common teammate and squadmate for many of the ship girls at Yokosuka, because her assignment as a seaplane tender, especially her flying boat Taitei-chan, gave her a unique role of being a close air support ship girl able to deploy her flying boat instantly for a huge volume of machine gun fire, something that the normal carriers couldn't do - provide instant air support. Thus, we sent Akitsushima frequently with our destroyer squadrons for patrol missions and scouting missions, since she and her Taitei-chan was really good at getting other ship girls quickly out of a bind or a bad situation. And given the fact that Yuudachi and Shigure were two of our strongest destroyers at Yokosuka, Akitsushima was naturally assigned with them for many missions.

Because they've got breakfast nailed down, I decide to head over to the living room to turn on the TV for the kids. By this time, the twins have woken up and are playing with Chibi Akitsushima, who's the spitting image of her mother, just with different colored eyes. Chibi Akitsushima absolutely adores Ishii and Hisashi, so she just spends all of her time at our house just glomping them all day, which, fortunately, the puppies don't mind.

But as I turn the TV on for them and switch channels to the kids' programs, I can't help but think about the mystery between Chibi Akitsushima and the twins. For some unknown reason that eludes all logic and common sense, Yuudahachi, Sandachi, and Chibi Akitsushima never have a _normal _conversation. I'll demonstrate what a typical conversation between those two is like:

"Poi?"

"Kamo!"

"Poi poi?"

"Kamo..."

"Poooi!"

"Kamo, kamo!"

"Poi..."

"Kamo?"

"Poi poi poi."

"Kamoooooo..."

"...ka...ka..."

"Kamo! Kamo!"

"Uuuu...ka...k...k...kaamm..."

"Kamo!?"

"...K-Ka...kamopoi!"

"..."

"Kamopoi? Kamopoi! Poikamo? Poi!"

"...kamo..."

"Kamopoi!"

"Kamo...poi...kamo."

So like, maybe, this's, like, maybe, a conversation about, like, ducks...maybe. Just maybe...

Their speech is bizarre. They only talk like this to each other. [Verbal Tics Intensify]. My jimmies are beginning to be quite rustled.

I just like watching our puppies. Whenever they hear Chibi Akitsushima talk with the twins, they treat it like some sort of TV special, and they sit down and watch them talk like it's the most entertaining stuff in the whole wide world. Their faces turn back and forth from Chibi Akitsushima to the twins like the faces of a tennis audience watching a live tennis match as they watch the ball. It's so fun to watch the puppies that way.

This time, I decide to join in on their little cryptic conversation that only they seem to understand, just for the lulz.

"Poi," I say, leaning in to join them. They turn to me too.

"Poi~!" my twins chime in simultaneously.

"Kamo..." goes Chibi Akitsushima.

"Poikamo?"

"...poi...kamo...?" little Akitsushima looks at me interestedly. "Poikamo!"

"Poi poi! Pooi!" Sandachi angrily calls over. "Kamopoi! Kamopooooi!"

But Chibi Akitsushima shakes her head firmly. "Poikamo!"

"Kamopoi!"

"Poikamo!"

As I thought, I don't get this at all.

"Deaaaars! Breakfast is ready, kamo!" Akitsushima calls from the kitchen, and soon she comes out to check up on us in the living room. "Breakfast is ready, kamo!"

"Yeah, we heard. C'mon, you girls, food, food!" I say excitedly to get the girls excited, and Yuudahachi cheers her little cute cheer.

"Food, food~!" she goes. As the girls march in, I turn to Akitsushima.

"Akitsushima...about the girls," I mention in a low voice, "have you ever figured out what they talk about whenever they're together?"

Akitsushima shakes her head too.

"It's so weird that they talk like that. I don't even talk like that with Yuudachi-chan, kamo," Akitsushima admits. "Maybe they were meant for each other!"

"Probably. It's probably more logical to think that way at this point. Are we having, like, ducks for breakfast, maybe?"

Akitsushima pulls on my cheek for making fun of her verbal tic.


	11. The Beshtest Dad

"So how's your husband doing?" I ask Akitsushima. My wife, Akitsushima, and I are still sitting at the dining table after breakfast, after we've already cleared the table and taken the dishes to the sink so that we can wash them later. For now, catching up with Akitsushima is more important.

"Oh, my husband? He's doing just fine. He just received a nomination for Todai's best professor of the year again, too!" Akitsushima proudly boasts.

Her husband, whom we've affectionately nicknamed Master Professor (or Professor for short), is, obviously, a professor at Tokyo University, arguably the nation's best known center for higher education. We'd met a couple times before, and he's both really nice and cool to chill out with and incredibly smart. He's one of those child geniuses, having graduated from Todai himself at the ripe young age of twelve and pursuing a triple doctorate in surgical anatomy, medicine, and dentistry, which he got by eighteen. Apparently, he was so smart that Todai wanted him to stay as a lecturer so that he could train generations upon generations of Japan's future upcoming surgeons, doctors, and dentists, so since eighteen, Professor's been teaching at the university until now. Because free college tuition was part of our black ops project's perks after our decommission after the war, Akitsushima talked to me and other officers at Yokosuka and decided that she'd try going to university, since it sounded like fun, and because we're right next to Tokyo, we sent her to Todai. And that's where they met - Akitsushima enrolled in one of Professor's lectures and met him in their lecture hall before the lecture actually started, and as he'd admit to me later, Professor was pretty smitten by her. So after about a year of getting to know each other, Akitsushima eventually reciprocated his feelings, and now we've got Chibi Akitsushima running around romping about with my twins.

"Wait, isn't that, like, his sixth year getting that award or something...?" I ask hesitantly. I remember Akitsushima mentioning something like this before, too.

"His seventh, in fact. I mean, c'mon, I was student, I know firsthand just how smart he is, kamo!" Akitsushima beams. "He's my beloved husband, after all, kamo!"

"You say that, yet you glomped the heck out of me when you came in earlier..." I avert my gaze, rolling my eyes as I do so.

"W-Well, that's because - that's because I still admire my superior officer from our active duty days!" the seaplane tender blushes as she shakes her fists in the air. "I-If - if I never met Kichirou, I wouldn't have minded asking you!"

"Asking me? Asking me what?"

"F-For marriage! What else?!"

"H-Hey, hey, what're you trying to say right now?" I snap my eyes back to Akitsushima, then over to my wife, Yuudachi. "I'm married, married! Don't talk like we're having an affair or something!"

"Poi?" Yuudachi tilts her head a bit too innocently for the topic at hand. "But I don't mind if it's Akitsushima-chan, y'know, Colonel?"

"Yuudachi...as much as I love you as my wife, that was _not _what you were supposed answer back..."

But Yuudachi just keeps giving me that innocently confused look. I don't wanna know what she truly feels, but I seriously hope she doesn't actually think that two-timing is okay. For sure, Shigure would slit my wrists in my sleep if she ever found out I'm being unfaithful to her ship sister.

"Well, that aside, has Professor been coming home more frequently? I know he really cares for you and little Akitsushima, but still, he can't be staying away from home for work all the time, he ought to know that," I sigh a bit tiredly, since this morning's already been so hectic. Thank goodness I've decided to have kids with Yuudachi when we were still really young - I'd hate to imagine what our lives would be like if we decided to have them later on, like in our thirties or something. Maybe it wouldn't matter so much for Yuudachi, she being a ship girl and all, but all of the Solomon Merry-Go-Rounds, all the Poi waves...while I can tough it out now, I'm not sure if I can handle my own family like a man later.

"Oh, yeah, he has, don't worry about that," Akitsushima smiles, waving my concern aside. "It was just a month ago that he was really busy, since we got a few really prestigious researchers from Germany who took up a lot of our time. Now he's coming home properly, and we've been spending lots of quality family time, just like everyone here!" Akitsushima loses herself in an atmosphere of flowers and happiness as she watches her daughter tickle Yuudahachi's tummy, much to the latter's amusement, and Sandachi does the same to Hisashi, our Shiba Inu pup, who whines cutely, lying on his back and waving his legs up in the air as Sandachi buries her nose there and rubs him with her face.

"Wait, wait, you wouldn't want to model your family after mine. You're underestimating the power of the Poi," I warn the former seaplane tender with a dramatic raise of my arm. "You can't let little Akitsushima fall into the depths of the Poi! I can save my daughters from it, but I can't save yours!"

"You make it sound like it's a bad thing, Lieutenant."

"Well, more so for Professor. That aside, how's your job treating you? How many years has it been since your graduation again?"

Akitsushima counts with her fingers. "Four years...kamo."

"And how's your job treating you so far?"

"Yeah, it's been great. Aww, it's just like you to worry for me, Lieutenant ~ " Akitsushima giggles. Professor managed to secure for his wife a job on the human resources department staff after Akitsushima graduated top of her class, and the Todai admin board, not really wanting to go against his wishes to keep him on their payroll, obliged him, so now Akitsushima is part of the Todai staff, helping run the daily activities and logistics of the school.

"Yeah, if I were to worry about you even more, what're you doing, having breakfast at someone else's house like it's a weekend or something? Shouldn't you be at Todai right now?" I admonish her. Akitsushima just blinks at me, and so does my wife.

"But...today's Sunday, though...?" Akitsushima says hesitantly. "Er...kamo...?"

I dart my neck over to the calendar on the wall, underneath our clock in the dining room. Sure enough, today's Sunday. So I smack my palm against my face.

"Ah! Wait, d-don't feel too bad about that, Lieutenant, I-I always make lots of silly mistakes like that too, kamo!" Akitsushima stammers upon seeing my reaction. "S-See, e-even a ship girl like me can make mistakes too!"

Despite her reassuring words, I still mumble dark magic under my breath. "Confusing the day of the week...and I'm what rank now...a Colonel...may as well demote myself back to Lieutenant...God, this's humiliating..." I curse myself moodily, among other quiet self-ramblings.

"Akitsushima-chan, I know!" Yuudachi claps her hands together. "While you're here, do you wanna go to the new shopping mall they built nearby? Y'know, the one near Iriyamazu, the one that they built next to the park there. We've never been there, and Colonel and I were talking about taking Shigure and the kids, so do you wanna tag along today?"

"Eh, we're going today?" I lift my face off my hand in surprise.

"Why, do you not feel like it, poi?"

"Well, it's just - I didn't know we were gonna go _today_...but it's fine, if you wanna go, we can go."

"Yaaaaaay! Colonel, you're the best, poi!" my wife cheers with her arms raised in the air, and she glomps on me and plants a messy kiss on my forehead. "The kids'll love it! The new shopping mall is super cool, so I've heard, poi!"

"Uwah! L-Lieutenant, m-m-me too, me tooooo!" the seaplane tender cries as well, her face reddening up and her eyes starting to spin out of control. "Gimme a k-kiss, too! I need one, k-k-k-kamooooooooo! ! ! !"

_"WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE YOU ASKING ME TO DO!" _I put my hands on Yuudachi's shoulders. "Yuudachi, listen, you're my precious wife, so please don't do anything in front of Akitsushima that'll make her go ham on me too, okay?"

Yuudachi just tilts her head innocently again - by this point, it's becoming a running gag like a romantic comedy.

"But I don't mind if she goes ham on you too, though? You don't mind it whenever I do it, too, poi!"

"Too much information, too much information!"

"With that being said, Lieutenant, let's all go to your room and finish it there, uehehehehehehheeee~" Akitsushima makes a slurping noise as she wipes the drool from her mouth off with the back of her hand, getting up from her chair and approaching me suggestively.

"No no no no no, this's supposed to be a safe story meant for a grade school audience! Akitsushima, this isn't supposed to be something that should be in this story right now!"

"Kaa-shan, are we going somewhere today?"

The bright, even more diabetes-inducing innocence of Chibi Akitsushima's voice peeps up, like a young chick peeping at its mother hen. We, the adults, turn to look at the entrance into the dining room, and there stand Chibi Akitsushima and the twins, with the pups in tow.

"We heard somethin' about goin' somewhere fun today, poi poi!" Sandachi cheeps excitedly, her radar in full effect. I suppose it can detect things other than doughnuts. "Where we goin', Tou-san, Kaa-san?"

"Somewhere fun, somewhere fun~!" Yuudahachi also raises her arms into the air like her mother's done and cheers. Seizing this chance to stop Akitsushima from glomping me again, I jump out of my seat and put my hands on my hips like the proud father that I am.

"We're going to sortie to the new shopping mall at Iriyamazu! I hear it's even got a kiddie playground! Right, Yuudachi?" I turn to my wife, who also nods excitedly, shaking her fists up and down.

"Yeah, I heard that too! It sounds like a lot of fun, poi!" Yuudachi gets herself pumped up too. Like I said, she's always got a big childish streak to her, even though she's a mother of two already.

"So! You three, y'all wanna go see what the new shopping mall's like?" I ask the kids, and the decision is unanimous.

"Yeaaaaah! We wanna go, we wanna go!" they all scream with excitement, and Sandachi starts going ballistic, cackling madly with the kind of childish anticipation that any kid who knows they'll be getting what they want has. Ishii and Hisashi, seeing Sandachi romp about, also start going nuts, barking and shrieking with Sandachi simply for the sake of joining in on the fun.

"And to make things even better, we're gonna ask Kirisame-chan to come with us too!"

"Waaaaaaaaaahhhhh~" Yuudahachi and Chibi Akitsushima get super excited by this, Chibi Akitsushima more so because it's been a while for her since she's seen Shigure's daughter. Yuudahachi, however, toddles up to me and hugs me around my waist.

"Thank you, Daddy! You're the bestest dad ever, poi!" Yuudahachi says with the sweetest smile I've ever seen her make to date, looking up at me with the brightest smile that blinds me with the cuteness of the Poi.

"Y-Yuudahachi, you..." I'm so taken back by my own daughter's earnest feelings that I'm about to swoop her up off her feet to spin her around, but then her twin sister comes crashing through and bullets straight into the side of my left thigh.

"Yaaaaaaaayyyyy~! Yeah, Tou-san, you're the beshtest! The beshtest, the beshtest, poi poi poi!" Sandachi also starts rubbing her cheek against my leg, like a dog standing up and battering the leg of its owner, begging for a dog treat.

"Then it's settled!" Triumphantly straightening up my back and pointing like a charismatic naval officer, I strike a gallant pose. "Let's sortie to the shopping mall!"

"Yes, sir!"

"Poi!"

"Kamo!"


	12. Crepes

We call over Kiri-chan and Shigure, who arrive promptly in their weekend best. Shigure comes in a black long-sleeved button-up with white cuffs, the same color scheme as her uniform that she wore when we were still in active duty, and a long white skirt, beautiful as always. Her daughter Kirisame toddles in a sky-blue blouse and a matching white skirt proportional to her mother's. We tried to get my brother Shintaro to tag along, but he said that there were a few containers in Tokyo Bay that needed immediate processing, so he couldn't join us, even though he wanted to.

Yuudachi is rocking the casual hottie look today, a large black tank top with a white midriff and short knee-length jeans. Given how young we still are - Yuudachi was eighteen and I was twenty when we had our twins - you'd think that Yuudachi and I were just still girlfriend and boyfriend, having a good time dating still. The same goes for Shigure - in fact, any ship girl who's married already and has children could most likely pull it off.

"Oh, you two, don't'cha wanna wear something cuter than your uniforms just for today?" Yuudachi whines to our daughters as I bring Shigure and her daughter from the front door into the twins' bedroom, where Akitsushima is helping Yuudachi pick out some suitable outdoors clothes for the kids, the kinds of clothes you'd wear while just casually strolling through the mall. Chibi Akitsushima is giggling with happiness on the twins' bed as Ishii the Golden Lab pup licks her face all over, his tail wagging excitedly.

"Poooi! Daddy said that we'd be sortieing to the mall, so we _have _to wear this!" Yuudahachi frets, rejecting the cutesy clothes that Akitsushima and Yuudachi have picked out for the twins.

"Yeah! Tou-san said sortie, so sortie means sortie clothes!" Sandachi backs up her sister, and they synchronize their arm crossings over their chests. It's a pretty funny sight to behold.

"Oh dear...they must be at that age then, aren't they?" Akitsushima sighs with that motherly kind of concern. "It must be hard on you, Yuudachi-chan, Lieutenant, you having twins and all, kamo..."

I'm about to correct Akitsushima to call me Colonel instead of Lieutenant, but I change my mind. It's not like it matters what I'm called, so long as we know what's being talked about.

"Well, normally, they're usually cooperative with us whenever we want them to wear something, so I don't know why they're so adamant about this, poi..." Yuudachi frowns a bit. "Ah, Shigure, you're here. Hey, girls, Kiri-chan's here too, we're all waiting on you two now. Hurry up and change out of those clothes, you don't wanna be holding everyone else up, do you?"

Kirisame waves shyly at the twins, and the twins, their expressions brightening up at the sight of their best friend, quickly frown again, feeling torn between their choices. I sigh to myself - this situation's kind of partly my fault too, because whenever the girls hear the word "sortie", they get super serious and don't ever want to change their minds.

"Yuudahachi, Sandachi," I say while kneeling down in front of them, "this isn't a super serious sortie or anything. We're going to go have fun today too. So whaddya say? Why not wear some cute clothes for a change? I'm sure Mom would love it. I would, too, y'know."

_"Really!?" _both Yuudahachi and Sandachi, hearing my little speech, instantly change their minds, and I watch their eyes explode with sparkles that blind me with the Poi. "Then we'll change, we'll change, pooooi!"

With blazing fast speed that truly makes them my wife's daughters, the twins swap clothes with the ones that Yuudachi is holding for them and toss their uniforms onto their bed in neat stacks like the good little children that they are. Now, they're also wearing matching blouses of their own, and Yuudahachi is sporting a frilly pink skirt while Sandachi elects for some long jeans, true to their respective natures.

"Awwww, that's unfair, Colonel, poi!" Yuudachi barks at me with indignation. "How come they listen to you so well but not me? I'm their mother, you know, poi! Tell them to listen to me more often too!"

"Because you spoil them too much, dang it, Yuudachi!" I berate my wife gently. "Since you always give 'em what they want, they know they can try to convince you to change your mind and let 'em have what they want whenever you don't agree."

"But - but that doesn't explain the fact that they took _your _suggestion so quickly over mine, poi!"

I just shrug.

"Because they like me more, I guess? I dunno!"

At this, Yuudachi gets all teary-eyed, and her lips start to wobble like I've driven a figurative speech bubble arrow through her heart.

"Th-That's so mean, pooooiii! ! !" Yuudachi cries, and she puts her hands on my shoulders and starts shaking me back and forth. "T-Teach me how to make them like me more, then, Colonel! Pweeeease, pooooi!"

_"What kind of a mother are you to have to say something like that in the first place?!"_

Seeing this, the twins dash up to their mother's legs and hug them, and dancing around them, they sing,

"Don't worry, Mommy, we still love you, po~i!" And Sandachi adds in her own customized chorus of Poi's for added oomph to the cutesy feels.

Yuudachi responds by swooping down and snatching up both of the twins in her arms, smushing her cheeks into her daughter's faces.

"I-I'm not - not a bad Mommy, am I? Right, right? Poi?" Yuudachi asks her daughters, asking a ridiculously bogus question for someone like herself.

"Of course not, po~i!" Sandachi coos and pecks her mom on the cheek. At this, Yuudachi's boilers seem to go nuts, as her entire face goes visibly red before she smothers the twins' faces into her own.

_"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee~! ! ! ! __I have the best daughters in the whole woooooooooooooooooooorld~! ! ! ! ! !" _Yuudachi squeals like a Japanese schoolgirl...oh wait. Well, I'm more surprised she didn't realize that by now. I peel one of the many hearts that are flying off the rubbing contact between my wife's and my daughters' cheek mashing off my forehead.

"This...is this how every day goes for you, Lieutenant?" Akitsushima asks hesitantly as she, Shigure, and I watch Yuudachi start rolling around on the floor with her daughters, and Hisashi romps with them, screaming all the while.

"Yeah. Sometimes, it's hard to see Yuudachi as my wife," I sigh with an embarrassed smile. "But that's alright."

* * *

We pile into the Honda van in our garage and head over to the new shopping mall at Iriyamazu, about a ten to fifteen minute drive from our house, depending on traffic. The hype around this new shopping mall was pretty substantial, and today, being Sunday, means that there will inevitably be a lot of locals like us coming to see just how good of a shopping mall it is. Not that I blame them - if this shopping mall proves to be spectacular, then for many of the locals around here, again, including us, there won't be a need to head all the way into downtown Tokyo to find a good shopping mall. So as expected, the place is packed.

After finding a parking spot after some twenty minutes of driving around the absolutely over-capacity parking lot, our gang wanders through the shopping mall, not knowing where to go first since we know nothing about the place. For the amount of people that seem to be here, the mall itself isn't so crowded at all. Maybe the mall is just that big.

Shigure acquires a map of the place from one of the informational booths on the first floor, and we sit on one of the benches near a designated rest area where people sit down, relax, and eat if they've bought food from any of the infinitesimal eateries in the mall. There's even a small fountain in the middle of this rest area, which is quite fancy.

"Oh, dang, look at this..." I murmur, reading the map quickly and realizing the sheer size of the place. "I mean, it did look big when we were driving in, but..."

"There's even a supermarket at the east wing of the first floor," Shigure points out. "Depending on what they carry, we might not even have to go downtown for our groceries anymore. How convenient..."

Kirisame, Shigure's daughter, is sitting with us, eating a cream and chocolate fudge crepe that her mother's bought for her. She tugs on my sleeve and raises her crepe at me when I look down at her.

"Have...some," Kirisame offers quietly and shyly.

"Huh? Uh, er, well, that's...that's yours, right?" I blurt out. Kirisame is just such a pure girl that anything she does seems like the cutest thing ever, and I, a man who's used to the shenanigans and bouncy, crazy days of the Poi family, find myself taken back by Kirisame's gesture.

"It's fine, Colonel," Shigure smiles at me from the other side. "She just wants to show her uncle how much she loves him, that's all."

"Shigure, you're not exactly helping me out here..." I mumble, averting my eyes. I know I'm blushing, and as a guy, personally, I feel like my man card should be revoked whenever I'm the one blushing. And worst of all, Shigure sees this and goes on the offensive.

"Oh? But you're going to hurt my daughter's feelings, aren't you?" she mutters to me in a tauntingly low voice. "You know what happens when someone hurts my daughter's feelings, right, Colonel? Surely you remember what become of your brother when he didn't take that cookie from Kirisame...?"

There was this one time when my brother declined his daughter's offer of a cookie. The next day, Shintaro kept mumbling "I'm sorry, Shigure-chan" over and over for the next three days. I don't feel so obligated to find out what he went through.

"Um...which part should I take?" I ask Kiri-chan, who plucks a strawberry slice from her crepe and hands it to me, so I take it and pop it in my mouth. "Oooh...good. It's good."

Kirisame smiles, giggling with happiness.

"Yay~" she sings, and my eyes are once again blinded by the cute. Because Kirisame looks almost exactly like her mother, it's like watching Shigure act the same way. i mustn't let myself get sidetracked...we're both married, after all...

"Colonel~! Shigure~!" Yuudachi calls as she and the twins come over to us with crepes of their own. Judging by the wrappers, it seems they'd found the same crepe stand as we did. "We got you - oh, Kiri-chan, did Mom get you a crepe too?" Yuudachi asks, kneeling down in front of Kirisame as the twins also climb up onto the bench to sit with their best friend, and Kirisame nods quite happily. "I see, that's great, poi. Colonel, I got you one too~"

"Oohhh!" my eyes widen with delight, as Yuudachi's gotten me my favorite kind of crepe, honey chocolate cream with hazelnut. "Thanks, Yuudachi!"

I bite into my crepe, and the wonderful taste of chocolate cream seeps into my mouth. Being a chocolate lover, this is just bliss - unfortunately but understandably, none of the rest of my family enjoys chocolate as much as I do. They're more vanilla fans.

But despite this, Yuudachi sits next to me while we take a break and eat our crepes.

"Oh, Colonel, you've got some on your cheek," Yuudachi tells me, glancing at me just before she's about to take a bite of her own fruit crepe.

"Hm, do I? Then how 'bout you wipe it off and eat it for me?" I tease my wife. Normally, she gets pretty flustered whenever I ask her to do something flirty like that.

But Yuudachi leans over and licks the chocolate cream off the corner of my mouth. With no hesitation.

"Heeeeehhh? You didn't think I was gonna chicken out of that one, did you, Colonel, pooooiii...?" Yuudachi gives me a deviously playful grin. I find myself being the one at a loss for words and just continue eating my crepe. Yuudachi just giggles and offers me her own crepe. "Sorry, that was kinda uncalled for. Here, have some 'a mine."

"Why do I get the feeling this's some kind of elaborate trap?"

"It's not a trap, poi, so just have some!"

So I take a bite out of hers. The strawberry and kiwi slices so surprisingly well with the chocolate cream from my own crepe.

"Aha, indirect kiss, poi~" Yuudachi giggles, blushing a bit.

"You - Yuudachi, if you wanted a kiss, just ask me!"

"Oooooh, you two, getting a little frisky here out in public, aren't we...?" Shigure coos to us, much to my chagrin.

I swear, sometimes, these two...


	13. The Pet Store

"Lieutenant, Lieutenant!" Akitsushima finds us at our little rest bench as we lick our fingers clean of our crepes. "Look at what I found at a bookstore we passed by, kamo!"

Bounding over to me first, she sticks a pretty thick book in front of my face, and when I hold my hands out to stop her from bashing my face in with the cover, I see that it's a book on theoretical anatomy.

"Nice. Is this like a gift for your husband? Like a birthday gift?" I ask, reading the subtitle.

"Oh, no, not a birthday gift. You see, my husband really likes to read. He hardly ever watches TV with us unless it's children's programs that we watch with our daughter," Akitsushima sighs. "Maybe we'll read this together in bed before we go to sleep~"

"That sounds...romantic," I force a smile. I can't imagine reading a book on theoretical science together with my wife to go to sleep would be remotely romantic, but I suppose that's only because I'm not a doctor nor a lecturer nor someone who's graduated college at a super young age.

"Doesn't it? Oh, it'll be so great, kamo~" Akitsushima giggles. As long as she thinks it'll be a good idea, I suppose I shouldn't be one to dissuade her.

"So? Where are we headed to next?" I look around at the ladies. Shigure and Yuudachi are poring over a small map that Shigure has retrieved from the informational booth.

"Hmm...well, I think we've explored most of the first floor for now..." Shigure murmurs, "we will check out that supermarket once we are done exploring the rest of the shopping mall. What's on the second floor...?"

"Oh, lookie lookie, Shigure," Yuudachi points excitedly at the second floor. "There's a pet shop over here! We can pick up a few things for Ishii and Hisashi, poi!"

"Oh, you're right...I should maybe get our own puppy a new chew toy, I think he's been itching for another..." Shigure thinks. "Then Colonel, you don't mind if we visit the pet store on the second floor, do you?"

"Anywhere you wanna go," I shrug. "Okay, girls, let's go visit the pet store!"

The girls, hearing the words "pet store", all squeal with excitement and cheer for the pet store. They get so easily excited over the simplest things. Well, then again, we all own pets, so it's understandable. So we get up from our little rest stop and head up the escalators to hit the pet store.

Once we reach the pet store, we're greeted by a lively young lady, most likely a student at Todai working part-time as the clerk at the counter, and we can hear all the noises of the jungle coming from all around the store. Kiri-chan, Yuudahachi, and Sandachi go all sparkly and bubbly again as they enter.

"Doggies! Doggies! _Doggieeeeeeeeeeees!" _Sandachi screams wildly with no restraint, and before I can remember to grab hold of them before they run like bulls, she and Yuudahachi take off like rockets and slide their way to victory over to the dog pens, where the puppies and dogs that are on sale are roaming about quite freely. But once the Poi's approach the ring, the dogs and puppies inside go absolutely nuts, and they dash over to greet the twins, barking and howling excitedly.

"Aaahhh, no good, no good, they're going at it again~!" one of the store employees, wearing an apron with the store's logo on it, hurries over from nearby, interrupting his work of stocking some bags of pet toys onto the shelves. "Excuse me, misses, it's not good for you to get so close to the puppies. If you could, um, back up a little bit, that'd be nice..."

But both the twins completely ignore the store employee and reach their small, delicate hands through the perforated holes in the doggie walls of their pen, and the dogs, all wagging their tails excitedly, sniff like they've never sniffed before at the girls' hands.

"Ehehehe...you're all such good kids, poi~!" Yuudahachi giggles, since their sniffing tickles her hand and she loves the feeling. Ishii and Hisashi always do that for her back home, too. Sandachi is already busy lifting one of the puppies out of the pen and rubbing her face into the puppy's as it licks her face all over.

"Eeehhh...am...am I being ignored...?" the poor employee asks himself out loud, unwilling to take the twins away when clearly they're not really doing anything dangerous. Meanwhile, Kirisame has found her way over to the kitty corner, and because the store employee is busy trying to sort the mess out with the twins, Kirisame manages to slip inside the kitty pen undetected and is now covered head to toe with kittens and cats that purr as they rub their cheeks all over Kirisame. Checking on her to make sure she's okay, I watch as Kirisame's sparkling face shines even more brightly. She loves cats, since they're her preferred animal, so drowning in a sea of cats is like ignorant bliss for her. To Kirisame, there is no such thing as too many cats.

"Maybe I should take a picture, your brother would love a picture of this..." Shigure smiles, charmed by the sight of her daughter dwelling amongst the denizens of the kitty pen. Yuudachi, as expected, has joined the twins in greeting the doggies, and at the sight of Yuudachi, the dogs in the doggie pen go completely ballistic, and one of the dogs actually manages to push down the lock that keeps the doggie pen's door shut and opens it on accident, so like a floodgate, the door swings open to release the tide of doggies that storm out and romp all over my wife and my daughters.

"Hey look...it's one big giant Poi party..." I laugh as the rest of my family shriek and laugh with all the dogs licking them all over. I'm not sure how I'm going to be able to explain this one to the store owners, but it's cute enough to force me to use insulin shots, so I just stand there watching the scenes.

"Ah, ah - " the store cashier, looking on with flabbergasted embarrassment and confusion, decides that the first thing she needs to do is bow to me in apology - for what exactly, I'm not too sure myself. "I-I'm sorry - th-th-this's my first week working here, a-and the dogs and cats have never acted like that before - "

"Yeah, it's normal for us, don't worry about it. I'll talk to the store owners and apologize to them for this commotion," I give her a bit of an awkward grin and bow a bit back to her in response.

"Normal...?"

"Yeah. Our daughters really love going to pet stores like these, and typically this's what happens."

"Oohhh...I see..." the clerk nods in enlightenment, but then her face contorts with amazement. "Wait a minute - th-they're your daughters, sir?!"

"Huh? Oh, yeah...those two over there, yeah. And she's my wife," I point out, watching Yuudachi scratch the belly of a prostrated German lab.

"Uwaaaahhhh~" the clerk's eyes seem to sparkle, too. "You look so young, yet you already have kids? How nice~"

"Yeah, my wife and I got married when we were really young. We're both not even thirty yet, and our twins are six years old now."

The clerk's expression is the kind of face people make whenever they hear something cute and go "d'awwwwwww". I'm sure there's a word for that but I can't think of it right now.

"Awww, how nice..." she says. "Were you two, um...were you highschool sweethearts? Er, I-I'm sorry if - if I'm asking something too personal..."

"Uh...well, yeah, you could think of it like that, I suppose."

"That's great, it really is. But...but what about them over there?" the clerk points to Shigure, who is snapping photos of Kiri-chan hugging a calico cat.

"Ah, the lady is my wife's sister, and that's her daughter," I explain.

"E-Eeeeeeehh!? Th-They're sisters?!" the clerk nearly screams in utter bewilderment. "B-But - but - but they look so different...! Your wife looks like a foreigner, while she looks native! Are they really...?"

"Um, well, my wife - she likes blonde hair, so she's dyed it, yeah," I blurt out, realizing that I hadn't thought that all the way through.

"Oh, really? But your daughters have blonde hair too..." the clerk points out.

"Uh, yeah, 'bout that, um...they wanted to imitate their mom so much that we let them dye their hair too. I know it probably wasn't the best idea to let them dye their hair at such a young age, but they were driving us nuts about it, so..."

The clerk clasps her hands together, looking up at me with that sparkling expression of hers like my daughters'.

"You sound like you're such a good father. Your daughters must be so blessed~" the clerk sings. "But...but that lady over there...and her daughter...surely...surely they're not..."

I glance over at Shigure and Kirisame.

"Huh? What about them?" I ask, but when I turn to the clerk again, I realize that she's blushing a bit.

"Y-You're not...you didn't...um..." the clerk stammers, "...m-marry b-both of them...?"

At this, I can't help but feel my face flush at such an embarrassing thought.

"N-No! You're mistaken, you're mistaken! I'm not double-married, no!" I quickly rectify. "We just all happen to know each other really well! I swear!"

"Erika, don't just stand there talking to the customer about something random, come help me get the dogs back into their pen!" the store employee calls over to the clerk, and the clerk, jumping a bit, excuses herself to go help her coworker.


	14. Splitting Chopsticks

We somehow manage to disentangle our children from the frenzy of kittens and puppies from the pet store. It took a lot of explaining and refusals to make the kids understand that we weren't going to ruin our own lives buying out the entire pet store's stock of kittens and puppies. ("Even if you give me those looks, we can't!")

"C'mon, you two, you can't let the kids just run amok in there!" I scold both Shigure and Yuudachi after we leave the pet store. There was a lot of apologizing by me afterwards, you can be sure of that, to the employees, although Erika, the store clerk I was talking with, didn't seem to mind so much. At least not as much as her coworker, who gave me that kind of disappointed look, as if he were asking me mentally what I was doing wrong as a father to let something like that happen. "I know we all love our children very much, but things like that? Come on now, we're better than that..."

Yuudachi, my wife, is looking down at the floor, her head bowed and her hair flaps bowed as well. She doesn't like it when I scold her for these things, but at the same time she knows that her course of actions in the pet store just now weren't exactly befitting of her status as a mother. Yuudachi's never been too great at taking criticism or being told that she's done something wrong - it's just part of who she is. She much prefers being excited or happy; she doesn't like it when she has to deal with more serious stuff.

"Poooii..." Yuudachi whines when I stop my scolding for a moment. "B-But it was a lot of fun, a-and - and it's important for the kids to have fun - "

"Yes, well, not at the expense of others! Do you know how much inconvenience we caused those poor employees there? Honestly, I'd be surprised if they told us the kids couldn't go near the kitten and puppy pens the next time we go there, if we ever do," I sigh. "And Shigure, don't freakin' text my brother those pictures you took of Kiri-chan while I'm talking to you!"

Shigure pouts at me, having been caught sending the pictures she's snapped of an extremely happy and sparkling Kirisame covered from head to toe in kittens to her husband on her smartphone behind her back. I know for a fact that Shigure and Kirisame will return home later today and find him in his room, dying from a huge, epic nosebleed.

"U-Um, Lieutenant, it's - it's, um, it's alright for now, isn't it? It's not like there was anything terrible that came out of it, kamo..." Akitsushima, who came in with Chibi Akitsushima towards the end to see me take the heat from that pet store coworker guy, tries to calm me down, but I refuse to give ground.

"No, sorry, not this time. This isn't the first time this's happened, and I asked Yuudachi to refrain from doing that back then, too," I say steadfastly, referring to this one time when Yuudachi went absolutely nuts when we visited this one park where a group of locals had a little dog-owner's club going on, and she and the dogs there went wild, and just like this time, I had to apologize quite profusely to the members of that dog-owner's club.

"I-I'm sorry, Colonel, so please, can we just get past this? Please? Pretty please, pooooi~?" Yuudachi begs me like a dog begging for doggie treats. "I-I know! Let's go to the curry shop here on the second floor! It's a little bit past lunch, but we're still hungry for some food, right? Right?"

Yuudachi looks back and forth from me and her sister with that kind of hopeful look that's trying desperately to change the subject, but with me simply continuing to give her a look of tired disapproval and Shigure's reluctance to help her sister out, Yuudachi begins to grow puppy-dog eyes and resorts to her very last tactic.

"I-I'll make you your favorite dessert when we get back home! I'll do anything, so - so don't look at me like that, I don't like it when you look at me like thaaaaat...!" Yuudachi whines terribly, and she starts bopping the fronts of my shoulders in a bit of a motherly tantrum, if that makes any sense. Not only does Yuudachi not like taking criticism for her questionable actions, but she hates it even more when I'm the one doing it, because she feels like I'm bullying her.

"Mom, Dad..." Yuudahachi's voice peeps out from below, and my wife and I glance down to see our twin daughters looking up at us apprehensively. "Please...don't fight, poi..."

"Yeah...it's - it's no fun if you two fight...we don't like it, poi..." Sandachi also mumbles, her usual happy-go-lucky, carefree smile temporarily disabled from her face.

I sigh. Once the children get involved, it's instantly become a losing effort.

"Okay, I'll lay off. But please, you two, don't let yourselves get carried away," I sigh. I am honestly a bit ticked off because I had to be the one to take the flak from that pet store employee, the coworker guy, and I'm the type of guy who admittedly doesn't really let go of even little things like this that honestly, in hindsight, shouldnt really matter, at least not until the day's over. "Let's go to that curry shop, then. Is anyone hungry?"

The twins immediately rebound and start prancing about around me. "Me, me, me!" they both chant, because the two of them really love their curry. Yuudachi does too, and I sigh again before we all start making our way towards the curry shop that Yuudachi has mentioned.

* * *

It's not primarily because I'm weak to my own daughters that I'm suddenly so willing to let something like this go, even though as a dutiful husband I need to let Yuudachi know that she's not a teenager anymore like we both used to be back in the days of our active military service. Well, it's _a _reason, but not the main reason. The main reason is because a year ago, Yuudachi and I had a pretty big fight over something honestly kind of stupid. For the twins' birthday, I wanted to bake a cake for them myself, since at the time I baked a lot as a hobby. I told my wife that she didn't need to go out and buy a whole lot of bakeries as she often tends to do on the twins' birthday, but for whatever reason she ignored me and bought a lot of cookies, doughnuts, and a huge strawberry and lemon drip cake from the bakery that we usually go to, the Furukawas', and before she came home, I'd already baked a lot of muffins, cupcakes, and a large angel food cake. So I berated Yuudachi for not listening to me, and Yuudachi reacted quite strongly back to me as well, and we went at it for about half an hour, and it was vicious.

I usually don't have a temper, but since like I said, I can get easily annoyed by little things that shouldn't really matter, and because Yuudachi has the ferocity of a warhound, the resulting fight we had was pretty brutal. No actual violence, since I'm positive that Yuudachi can whoop my butt in a straight-up fight, but we said a lot of things that are better off not being said. And since we both served in the military, we know how to say some pretty crude things. We got so into it that the twins got wind of it, and since they'd never seen us get so vicious at each other before, it's safe to say that they'd been forever scarred. Both Yuudachi and I realized too late the damage we left on them, so we both promised never to have another fight anywhere near that level of viciousness ever again. There have been times when it came close, but every single time after that we both remember that one incident and we just immediately forget about getting angry.

It's for the kids, is what I'm trying to get at. It's not because I'm so blinded by my love and affection for my daughters that I do this for their sake. It's in the hopes that when Yuudahachi and Sandachi both grow up, fall in love, and go get married, they won't have these kinds of conflicts with their own spouses. Love and forgiveness is what I want to teach them, and the best way to teach them is to practice it myself.

Plus, sadness and frowns don't belong on my daughters' faces. It's just weird for me to see them frowning or being sad. The Yuudahachi and Sandachi I know are always cheerful, always happy, and always enjoying themselves and enjoying life. Given their mother's dark past, both my wife and I don't want them to have the kind of bleak childhood that Yuudachi's had, and I'm certain that applies to all children of the ship girls of the Japanese navy.

* * *

Inside the curry shop, after being seated, while Akitsushima, Yuudachi, and Shigure talk about some navy stuff, I watch the kids play around with their wooden disposable chopsticks. Normally, here in Japan, cafes and restaurants like these have a box of plastic or metal chopsticks that occupants of the table take to use, but because this shopping mall has only recently opened and thus the curry shop hasn't had a lot of time to get started, they're making do with just cheap, disposable wooden chopsticks for now. The kids are easily amused by them, and they've all taken a pair of chopsticks each and are trying to split them dead evenly down the middle, as the natural instinct for humans snapping disposable wooden chopsticks apart tends to be.

Sandachi is first - with the most amount of concentration I've ever seen in a six-year-old girl, she puts all her efforts into splitting the chopsticks perfectly down the middle, and little by little, the chopsticks begin to give way. The other girls watch intensely, like this is a life-or-death situation that they're all in.

_Snap!_

Sandachi holds the two chopsticks in her fingers, blinking at them. The chopstick in her right hand still has a bit of the other along the top.

"Awwww..." Sandachi hangs her head in disappointment at her failure. "Shucks...I thought I had it, too, poi..."

"Lemme try, lemme try..." Yuudahachi, her sister, also gives it a go with her own pair of wooden chopsticks.

_Snap!_

Yuudahachi holds up two perfectly even wooden chopsticks, confirming her success.

"Yay!" Yuudahachi gives a little cute cheer, looking very satisfied with herself while Sandachi pouts, jealous of her sister's success over her own failure and reaches for another paper cover that holds the wooden chopsticks, but I interfere.

"Sandachi, don't waste chopsticks needlessly. You can try it again sometime later, but don't waste them," I firmly say, and Sandachi has no choice but to watch the others.

Chibi Akitsushima tries her hand at it too.

_Snap!_

Another perfect score, and Chibi Akitsushima gives her victory chant of "Kamo?!" in her pleasant surprise.

Kirisame, a bit pressured seeing all of her friends doing it, also tries it on her own, but her timidness is her downfall as she's too scared to actually pull the chopsticks all the way apart. I know it's wrong to think this, but it's so cute watching Kiri-chan exert all of her effort trying to pull apart those chopsticks while she's also being restrained by her timidness and childish fear of the chopsticks doing something crazy when she does pull them apart. Unhappy adorable goodness. But at this rate, she's going to be at it until our food comes, so I reach over and help Kiri-chan break apart the chopsticks, and to our luck, I help her split it right down the middle evenly. Happily surprised by this, Kiri-chan gives me a big, thankful smile, making my little contribution ever so worth it.

"Th-Thanks, Uncle Shintora-shan...!" she squeaks nervously, but I can tell she's pretty stoked about her success. Not surprisingly, Sandachi gets wind of this and pouts at me heavily.


	15. Father Fulfilled

"Girls? Giiiirrrrls! Yuudahachi? Sandachi? Girls, where aaaarrrreeee yooouuuu? I've got somethin' for you two!"

After eating a delicious lunch of curry rice and tonkatsu at the curry shop at the shopping mall, we all came back home to chill and wind down after a whole day of walking and exploring. Kiri-chan, being the gentle child that she is, is peacefully sleeping on the carpet in the living room, rolled up like a roll of sushi in a blanket from the twins' room. Ishii and Hisashi, our pet pups, have discovered her in the living room and are curiously sniffing at her, glancing at each other as though asking one another what they ought to do with Kiri-chan who seems to have sported a new coat of thick fur of some kind. They must be wondering why this human child has elected to suddenly grow this giant layer of fur in the summer heat that is prevalent now. Either way, Hisashi proceeds to lick Kiri-chan's face until she wakes up, takes one look at Hisashi, who grins back at her, and goes straight back to nappy time. Hisashi gives her a confused look. He doesn't really understand what's going on, so he lays on his belly next to Kiri-chan, watching the backyard outside with Ishii, who promptly joins him.

In the meantime, while Shigure and Yuudachi are talking with Akitsushima about some good children's extra-curricular activities and programs after school once summer vacation is over for the kids to enroll in, I took the time to run down to the Furukawas' and buy a box of glazed doughnuts for the kids as a surprise present. I know I'm spoiling them a little bit, since Shigure doesn't like it when Kiri-chan gets snacks like this right after eating, but I think she can let this one slide. Having set the box of doughnuts down on the low table in the living room nearby Kiri-chan and the puppies, I look around, wondering where the twins went. So I head inside the dining room.

"Hey, you three, do you know where the kids went? Besides Kiri-chan, of course," I ask, popping my head into dining room.

"Ah, they're outside playing around in the backyard, poi!" Yuudachi says, drinking some tea that Shigure has prepared.

"Colonel, should I get you some tea, too? Where did you go, anyway?" Shigure asks, with a touch of curious concern in her voice.

"Bought a box 'o doughnuts. You know the twins love 'em," I pop a grin at Shigure, who, as expected, frowns in gentle disapproval.

"But they just ate lunch..." Shigure pines, but I shake my hand at her to calm her down.

"It's only one box. The twins've demolished five boxes before, it's okay, they can handle it," I reply, and I bow out of the dining room as Shigure murmurs "Even still..."

I make my way out the living room and into the backyard. There, I find the girls slowly rolling across the grass of our backyard, giggling madly all the while.

"Aaaahhh, hahahahaha, poi poi!" Sandachi squeals crazily, beside herself in amusement at how ridiculous they must look rolling around like this. Chibi Akitsushima seems very concentrated on winning this rather awkward race, while Yuudahachi eventually rolls herself to a stop because she's laughing so hard, so she lifts herself up off the ground and watches Sandachi just barely edge out Chibi Akitsushima in the competition.

"I win, poi!" Sandachi cheers, pumping her arms into the air, and Chibi Akitsushima flails her fists angrily.

"Rematch! Sandachi-chan, rematch, remaaaaatch!" she complains bitterly. Chibi Akitsushima absolutely hates losing, and she'll demand as many rematches as it'll take for her to score even just one victory.

"Okay, but I'll still beat you!" Sandachi, grinning deviously and confidently, accepts her friend's demand for a rematch, and Yuudahachi, taking herself out of the race to judge the match, gets up and hurries over to the two girls who both get back down on the grass on their backs. Yuudahachi counts down:

"Three, two, one, go!"

And off the two girls go, rolling across the backyard like rolling logs. Sandachi, enjoying this way more than she probably should, goes "Weeeeeeeeeee~!" all the while she's rolling, while Chibi Akitsushima cries "I won't lose, I won't loooooooooooseeeeee!" as she rolls. The scene is too cute and comical. I feel like somewhere along the way, I should be on the floor bleeding my heart out because I can't handle the amount of _**hnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggg **_that is going on right now.

This time, however, Sandachi accidentally rolls off course and bumps into backyard patio ledge, allowing Chibi Akitsushima, who was close on Sandachi's tail, a prime opportunity to capitalize on Sandachi's mistake, overtake her, and finish first by crossing the designated line marked by a small potted plant also watching the race quite interestedly while soaking up the summer sun.

"Yeaaaahhh!" Chibi Akitsushima cheers, jumping up and celebrating her well-achieved victory. "I won, I won, kamo!"

"H-Hey, that's unfair, poi! Th-The ledge, it - it messed me up!" Sandachi immediately protests the victory parameters, attempting to contest the legitimacy of the victory of her opponent. "Rematch, rematch, poi!"

"Nope! No rematch!"

"Huh!? That's not fair! I gave you a rematch, you should give me one too!"

"Nope! No rematch, no rematch! I won, I won, kamo, kamo~!" Akitsushima's daughter goes _yaaaaaay _and starts running around in circles in celebration of her victory. Her running pattern reminds me of Taitei-chan's circular patrol routes whenever hunting down an enemy out at sea.

"Hey, hey, Sandachi, calm down, calm down, you both won once, so it's fair that way," I call out, breaking up the argument before it can get worse and threaten the friendship between them. "Besides that, everyone, I've got a surprise for you. Guess what it is?"

At the mention of a surprise, which to the girls means something along the lines of a gift, all three bounce over to me screaming in excitement and look up at me with twinkling, sparkling eyes full of anticipation.

_"A NEW PUPPY!?" _Sandachi practically screams in my face. "Please, pwease, pretty pwease, a new puppy! A new puppy, poi poi poi poi poi! ! ! !"

I chuckle awkwardly. "Er, no, we already have two, Sandachi...a third puppy would kill me..."

Sandachi begins to fret and hop up and down. "Th-Then what is it? What is it, pooooooi?!"

Then, I reveal my prize: one of the glazed doughnuts I took from the box and kept behind my back so that the girls wouldn't see until now. I watch the expressions on the girls go from excited anticipation to a curious look that can only be described as the look of drug addicts about to go on a binge. But before they can explode and tackle me for their prize, I put my hand out.

"STOP!"

And the girls freeze.

"Left!"

The girls hop and turn themselves to the left.

"Right!"

They hop, turning ninety degrees to the right.

"Back!"

They hop to their normal positions.

"Back!"

They hop around.

"Right!"

They hop to the right.

"Return!"

They hop around to face me again.

"Now catch!"

I toss the doughnut in my hand up into the air.

Sandachi locks in on the airborne, flying doughnut with the accuracy of modern anti-aircraft radar. Having the quickest reactions out of the three of them by far, Sandachi poises herself, and like a dog preparing to leap into the air, she bends her knees and launches herself up like a ship-launched tactical missile and snatches the doughnut perfectly out of the air with her mouth. As she jumps, Sandachi twists her body counterclockwise to receive the doughnut in her fangs at the perfect angle. I have the utmost pleasure of watching all this unfold as if in slow-motion, and it is awesome.

Having secured her target objective, Sandachi lands perfectly on her feet, doughnut in her teeth. Pulling it out of her mouth with her hand to rip a bite out of it, with a full mouth, she turns to me and gives me the V sign.

"Anti-air exercise successful, Tou-san! Target secured!" Sandachi cheers victoriously. "Poi!"

"Uwwaaaahhh, Sandachi-chan, you're so coooooool~" Yuudahachi isn't even mad at Sandachi's reflexes and skill, having nothing but respect for her younger twin sister's ability. Meanwhile, Chibi Akitsushima is sulking quietly, but she isn't throwing a fit because she knows Sandachi simply has better reactions than her.

Sandachi jumps up to me and hangs onto my shoulders.

"Tou-san, thanks for the treat, poi!"

And to my surprise, she lifts herself up and pecks me on the tip of my nose. Drawing back while still hanging around my neck, Sandachi smiles a smile so bright that I feel like I've just been blinded by the world's cutest flashbang.

"I love you, Tou-san! Poi poi!"

My life is complete. I've done my job as a father. I can now die happy. I have no regrets. Yuudachi'll find me lying in the backyard, dead from a heart attack and complications from type-Poi diabetes.


	16. Pre-Calculus

"Tou-san, Tou-san!"

After Akitsushima and Shigure had left with their daughters about two hours ago, Yuudachi went out with them to see Akitsushima and Chibi Akitsushima off and is now stopping by her sister's house to show her how to make a tea that Yuudachi's been wanting to make for us recently. Yuudahachi has followed along with Kiri-chan, so it's just me, Sandachi, and the pups in the house right now. I got out my secret bag of chewy chocolate chip cookies from the pantry and am chilling in the living room reading the _Asahi Shimbun. _Yuudachi doesn't like it when I eat these cookies in front of the kids because they'll start wanting some and it'll ruin their appetite, so really I can only indulge my sweet tooth when she's not around. And besides, Yuudachi is just as guilty as our children of sneaking snacks when she's not supposed to - just the other day, I caught her chowing on some cuttlefish just before dinner.

Sandachi, carrying what looks like her math textbook, scampers from her room over to me and clambers up with me on the couch, and I sit up from my lazy slouching posture to make room for her. She places the textbook on my lap and points down to a problem.

"Tou-san, can you help me with this one? I dunno how to do it..." she mourns as though it's a travesty that she can't solve this problem.

I set my newspaper down and take a look. This is pre-calculus. Six years old, and learning pre-calculus...and to think she was my daughter. I don't know whether to be proud or scared.

"Well, okay...let's see..." I stoop down. It's been a long while since I've ever had to do math, but if I take a look at it again, maybe I can figure something out and remember what I'd learned back in my school days...

48\. _Applying Calculus: _Using what you know of trigonometric functions, provide a mathematical explanation of the following equation:

e^(x + _i_y) = (e^x)(cos(y) + _i_(sin(y)))

I turn to my older daughter.

"Sandachi," I declare with the most amount of confidence I've put into my voice at one time, "I can't help you. Sorry."

Sandachi looks up at me with the kind of eyes that a child would give to you if you told her that her birthday party was getting cancelled this year.

"Why are you upset over this!? Sandachi, this isn't the kind of problem you should be able to answer! See, look!" I dramatically jab at the textbook at the question number. "Lookie here, the problem number's red! It says here - " I jab over to the captions right above it, " - that these questions are meant to be the hardest! Why are there _calculus _problems inside of a _pre-calculus_ textbook in the first place!? Who the heck are these publishers!?"

But my daughter seems to be deaf to my excuses. Her puppy eyes begin to tear up for reasons I can't even begin to explain.

"Y-Y-You c-can't h-help me...?" she whimpers pitifully. "I-I...I wanted to s-solve it...I - I got every other question in the ch-chapter right..." And before I can stop her, she breaks into tears. "I-I wanted to g-get the whole ch-chapter right...! A-And T-Tou-san c-can't help me...uaaaaaahhhh...!"

I stand up from the couch and dash over into the girls' bedroom. On top of her desk sits her notebook with the most beautiful handwriting I've ever seen with mathematical equations and problems jotted neatly in every line of the papers. Flipping through it and beholding this glorious hard work of my daughter, I realize that Sandachi really has answered every single problem in the chapter...in just two hours.

Grabbing her notebook and dashing back out to the living room to rendezvous with my quietly crying daughter, who by this time has now been joined by the pups looking up at her trying to figure out what's wrong, I take the textbook and flip to the back, where the answer key is. Scanning quickly, I juxtapose Sandachi's answers with the answer key's - well, the odd-numbered questions, anyway.

They're all correct.

"Sandachi, what the heck!" I exclaim as I nearly toss both the textbook and Sandachi's notebook up into the air in complete disbelief, but I stop myself at the last second in case my daughter takes it the wrong way and put them both down. "You got all these right, and you're fussing over the fact that you can't get the hardest problem too? Listen, I'll say this again, _this question isn't even meant to be in here!"_

But Sandachi only cries harder, but only slightly.

"B-But, but T-Tou-saaaaan~!"

"What, what? Tell Tou-san what's wrong. Don't let this bother you so much; why's it bothering you so much?"

I sit closer to my older daughter, and rubbing her eyes and sniffling, she looks up at me with those teary red eyes that sparkle like rubies. Not that I would know what rubies look like up close.

"B-Because - because Kaa-san, she - she said that if I did the whole chapter, I - I'd - I'd - " Sandachi inhales sharply, "I'd get some cookies!"

The cookie bag next to me, sitting on the right arm of the couch, crackles a bit in response behind me.

I find myself frozen, staring soullessly into the eyes of my older daughter. Did she just solve an entire pre-calculus chapter - and get all the questions she worked on right - just to get a _cookie?_

And did Yuudachi really say that? That she'd promise Sandachi some cookies.._.for this?_

Sandachi and Yuudahachi are very intelligent kids, let's get that straight. As Yuudachi herself was genetically modified, she passed on those traits to our daughters too. Right now they're something like high school or perhaps even freshman college students stuck in six-year-old bodies. But I can't get used to that, even after all this time. I'm too accustomed to viewing my children just as ordinary children. I mean, why shouldn't I? I want the best for my daughters. As cool as it is to know that my children are "special", and by "special" I mean they can walk on water and shoot guns as big as they are, there is a big part of me that just wants my children to live as normal as lives as possible. I don't want them to be labeled as freaks or end up being outcasts of society. This huge dichotomy between how things are now and how things usually are really tears me apart sometimes, and now is, well, one of those times. And while I know that Sandachi is perfectly okay with and capable of understanding high-level mathematics in a way that I never will, I just can't resist giving into the paternal side of me that wants to spoil my lovely daughters and not have them do freakin' _pre-calculus_.

But I remain calm anyway. Sighing lightly, I put my hand on Sandachi's head and start rubbing reassuringly. The twins are both very familiar with the ways I pat them on their heads, and Sandachi reacts appropriately, easing up eventually and ceasing her tears. She closes her eyes and bows her head a bit to let my hand on her head cover as much surface area as it can.

"You'll be fine. And besides, if you'd just asked..." I bring the bag of cookies from the arm of the couch behind me, put it on my lap, and draw one out to give to my daughter, "I would've just given one to you."

Sandachi, looking up at the cookie, brightens up and at first begins to reach out for the cookie, but hesitates.

"B-But...but Kaa-san, she'll - she'll get angry with me..." she muses sadly.

"It's okay, I'll talk to her. Besides, what is your mother doing, telling you something like that?" I wonder aloud as I press the cookie into her hands, and at my insistence, Sandachi takes it and chomps on it deliciously. As I watch Sandachi munch on that cookie, I really don't know what to feel about my wife after what Sandachi's said. Should I be angry with Yuudachi for promising something like that? Knowing her, I feel like this could be something she just said without really thinking, and Sandachi took it to heart. Sandachi's that kind of girl, after all. If you promise her something that she really wants, she'll never forget it and take it as seriously as death. Yuudachi ought to know better...

Deciding that I'll talk to her later tonight before we go to bed, I watch Sandachi lick her fingers of the chocolate chips that have smudged there.

"These've been, uh, sitting in the pantry for a few weeks now..." I mutter a bit sheepishly, since admittedly, these cookies do taste a little stale, just a little bit. "Kaa-san's always told me not to eat these around you, so..."

Sandachi shakes her head. "It's delicious, Tou-san," she smiles up at me with that diabetes-producing smile of hers and nods happily.

I immediately dig my hand into the cookie bag and withdraw another.

"OWWWWOOOOOOO! ! ! ! KTKR! ! ! ! !" I exclaim, presenting the cookie before my older daughter. "You're God's best gift to humanity, Sandachi! Please, have another cookie!"

Not really understanding my words and sudden shift in behavior but still delighted nonetheless, Sandachi joyfully takes the cookie and goes to town on it, now sitting next to me with my hand still on her head rubbing it. Ishii and Hisashi, enviously watching Sandachi munch on treats, jump up on my knees, and start barking or whining for treats of their own. We've trained them already not to touch the cookie bag, but understandably the pups want something of their own, too. They want Daddy to spoil them too.

"Wait here, Sandachi, I'm going to go get some treats for Ishii and Hisashi too - " I begin as I start to stand up, but as I stand, I feel something sharp tug on the back of my shirt. I turn around and find my daughter with her fingers pinching the very end of my shirt. "Sandachi, er...what's wrong? Did Daddy do something wrong?"

Sandachi looks up at me, real slowly, full puppy dog eyes mode engaged, and pipes,

"Thank you, Tou-san...y-you're always - always giving me stuff, even - even when..."

But she can't finish it and just starts crying again. Concerned now, I sit back down.

"Sandachi, w-wait, why're you crying again? What's wrong? Tell me. I'm listening," I say to my daughter.

"N-No, it's...it's just..." Sandachi sniffles as she quickly tries to wipe her eyes on her arm. "Tou-san, you...y-you always give me things, even if...even if I, I'm a bad girl, y-you...you always make me feel better..."

By this point I'm just getting more and more bewildered. "Bad girl? S-Sandachi, you - when have you been a bad girl? What are you talking about?"

My daughter sniffles again. "E-Earlier today, a-at the pet store...and, and, today, just now...I-I didn't do all the problems...I even, I even had to a-ask you for help..." I guess she can't take it anymore, because she lets herself fall over and puts her arms around my torso, or as much of it as she can.

Then, it clicks. Sandachi...maybe she's gradually developing a sense of perfectionism. Or is it just an exaggerated case of obedience? The twins like to listen to what their parents tell them because they want attention. But maybe now, Sandachi is getting to the point where this sense of obedience is growing on its own - I don't really recall her behaving like this regarding schoolwork before.

Whatever the case, I'm determined not to let her feel guilty.

"Ishii! Hisashi!" I call out like a drilling sergeant, and the pups, pining at my knees, sit up suddenly on the carpet, at alert. "Cheer up time! Get Sandachi, girls! Get 'er!"

Barking and screaming at my command, the pups jump up onto the couch and tackle Sandachi down onto the couch and begin to lick the ever-living deuces out of my daughter. Screaming shrilly but starting to giggle madly at the same time, Sandachi is forced to laugh and cry as the dogs lick her. She is very ticklish, so having a pair of licking dogs torment her is the best way to get her to forget about any heavy thoughts she might be having. Just to join them, I also start tickling Sandachi on her sides, and she goes from laughing to straight howling.

"T-Tou-sssaaaaan, s-s-s-sttttooop, stoooooop~! Eeeeeek, ahahahahahaaaaaaa, eeeeee~!" she screams delightfully. Her screams only fuel the dogs to lick her more as they become more excited by the commotion, and unable to endure it any longer, she pushes herself off the couch and tackles me down onto the carpet herself. I always forget that both of my twins can probably put me in a headlock as easily as I tie my shoelaces, so she sits on my stomach and subjects me to the same tickle torture as I had done to her.

"N-Nooooo, Sandachi, stop, stop, I give up, I give up! I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorrrrryyyyyyyyaaaaaaaahhhh! ! ! !" I scream as my own daughter turns the pups against me, and they, too, start drenching me in dog saliva.

"Huh? What's going on, what's going on?" I hear Yuudahachi's eager voice bouncing in from the front door - Yuudachi and she must have come back. My younger daughter bounds into the living room and sees what we're up to. "Ooohhh, this looks fun!" she cries, and Yuudahachi jumps in a belly-flop motion right onto my lower body. I watch her in complete fright as she launches herself up into the air in slow motion.

"Yuudahachi, no, _no, no no no no - "_

Yuudahachi sinks me for today.


	17. Date

Tonight, I'm treating my wife to a nice dinner at a small but excellent Western-style restaurant at Kannonzaki, near the sea. It's very expensive, given the quality of the food that can rival those of five-star hotels and the fact that the restaurant itself is situated right on top of a small cliff. We've been given seats outside in the parlor, overlooking the sea, so we practically have the best seats in the house. The owner of the restaurant, a kind old lady whose family makes a living running this restaurant for their normally rich and wealthy patrons, knows us because this was the same restaurant where I proposed to Yuudachi. She still remembers us, even after all these years, and I've noticed that she's seated us in the exact same seats as before. Yuudachi seems to have noticed this too.

We've left the twins over at my brother's and Shigure's place. Shigure was more than happy to look after them for a night, as Kiri-chan loves it whenever the twins come over for a sleepover party. We've also let Ishii and Hisashi, our pet pups, tag along with the twins too, because they don't like it whenever we leave them alone by themselves at home. I suppose I can understand, since it does seem a bit boring for them to have the whole house to themselves without any of us.

"Waaaaaah~ I'm so full, poi~!" Yuudachi declares with quite a cute stretch. Our plates are empty now - Yuudachi ordered her favorite dish from this restaurant - well, two, actually - medium-rare Hamburg steak with barbecue sauce, corn, and mashed potatoes with gravy and a slab of prime rib, also done medium-rare. Even as an adult, Yuudachi has retained some very childish tastes, but with the whole dog motif that she has, I suppose it's not something to be so concerned about.

"Was it good, Yuudachi?" I ask, wiping my mouth with my cloth napkin. I've had filet mignon and some greens, my own personal favorite from this restaurant as well. I don't know if Yuudachi caught this, but this was also the dish that I myself had ordered during the night of my proposal, though Yuudachi's dishes today were different from then. I just like minding the small details.

"Yeah, of course, poi~" Yuudachi gives me her beautiful, vibrant smile. "Thanks for treating me, Colonel~"

"Oh, c'mon, you know you don't have to call me that," I murmur, smiling back. I'm aware that usually I don't mind my wife insisting on calling me by my rank, but tonight is different. "We're here by ourselves, just you and me. Husband and wife, you know? You don't have to address me like I'm an officer. We're not here for military duties."

Yuudachi leans forward, putting her elbows on the table and resting her chin in her hands as she gives me a playful look.

"But, but, it's so much cooler calling you 'Colonel', poi," she reasons. "But if you want, just for tonight..."

She leans a bit further in.

"Honey," she whispers, almost seductively.

I can't hide the stupid big smile on my face.

"Th-Thanks..." I avert my gaze. After all these years of Yuudachi calling me by my rank - first "Lieutenant", then "Captain", then "Lieutenant Colonel", and now finally "Colonel", I have to admit that hearing my wife call me "Honey" so affectionately is sugar enough to give me diabeetus.

Yuudachi knows this, and she reaches over and pokes me in my left cheek.

"Hey, hoooooney, honey~" Yuudachi calls over to me with that irresistibly cute voice of hers. "What'cha dooooin', honey? Tell me, poi. What's on your mind, honey~?"

Finally recovering from this sugar shock, I lift up my head and take a look at my wonderful wife. We've both dressed casually for our little date tonight - I've got a warm sweater that Yuudachi's sewn for me last year and some light jeans, but Yuudachi's in a black skirt and a red cardigan and a yellow blouse. She's even got makeup on tonight, which normally she never bothers with since she doesn't like going through the hassle of putting on makeup in the first place. So the fact that she _has _gone through that hassle means a lot to me, since she wants to look her best to me, which I appreciate a lot, since that little bit of makeup does make her look quite pretty. Her red eyes that gaze back at me with such love are like small rubies glittering with life, with no sign of fading away anytime soon. It's times like these when I contemplate how lucky of a man I am to have married and had children with a girl like Yuudachi.

"Do you remember the night I proposed to you?" I ask my wife, tapping our small two-seat table. "Do you remember this table?"

Yuudachi gazes at me, trying to think back, and then it hits her.

"I-It's the same table, isn't it...?" she lets out a cute, small gasp.

"That's right."

"Did you plan this, poi?"

"Well, no, not really. The old lady probably did, though."

"Oh...aw, I thought you were going to make this really romantic," Yuudachi's smile slides off quickly and gets replaced by a small pout.

"Ahaha, well, you already know that I'm not a very romantic person, Yuudachi."

"I bet you could, if you tried a little, poi."

"Wh-What do you want me to do? I don't know how to be romantic."

"Mmmmuuu..." Yuudachi muses. "Well, you could...give me a kiss, or something, or..." she starts blushing as she says that, hearing the words that are coming out of her own mouth. They must sound a lot more embarrassing when they're spoken aloud than in her own mind. I can empathize, I know what that feels like whenever I tried expressing my feelings to her before, when we were both still in active duty.

"Well, I'm good at that," I grin proudly, puffing my chest out a bit. "Just leave that to me, Yuudachi. I can kiss you for as long as you want."

"N-No, no no, wait, wait, th-that's not what I meant, p-poi~!" Yuudachi cries softly and cutely, slapping my shoulder lightly with pit-pats of her hands.

"Hey, you were the one who asked me if I could try being romantic. If just kissing you is being romantic, I'll be as romantic as you want me to be. It's that simple!"

Yuudachi's face is turning very red. The way that she's averting her eyes away from my own to avoid meeting my gaze is so cute that I just want to hug her and pet her head. I don't know if my heart can take it.

"What's wrong, Yuudachi?" I press on, smiling at my wife. "What's on your mind? Tell me. I'm always a man of my word. You wanted me to call you by your name when we first got engaged, so I've always done that. Whenever you wanted me to hold you, I did. Whenever you needed a kiss, I gave you a kiss. Tell me what you want, Yuudachi." I pause, then mention, "but it can't be another puppy."

"I-I wasn't about to s-say that!" Yuudachi cries, but she, too, pauses. "...though, I kind of do want another puppy..."

"Two is enough! There isn't a day that goes by without Ishii and Hisashi trying to kill me by romping all over me on the living room floor! Throw in Sandachi and Yuudahachi in there, and I'm basically dead every day!"

"That's a lie!" Yuudachi counters. "If they always kill you every day, how come you're still alive, poi?"

"Because my love for you and the kids and the pups brings me back to life every single night," I declare. It sounds so freaking cheesy, but I don't mind sounding cheesy as heck for the sake of flirting. "Every time they kill me, I come back to life just so that I can let them kill me all over again. It's that simple."

Perhaps to any other normal girl, they might just find my words only half-amusing or just straight-up corny. But Yuudachi blushes hard at this. Maybe it's just because she's my wife and she loves me very much too, or maybe it's because she really likes being told such things. Either way, she smiles at me with that huge blush of hers.

"Then, then!" she continues, "then if they kill you every day, getting another puppy wouldn't hurt, right, poi? Another puppy confirmed?!"

"Oh God, no, no no!" I realize too late that I've dug myself a huge trap. "Not another puppy!"

"Yes, more puppies, poi!" Yuudachi chants, laughing just to shove it in my face. I know she's kidding, but it's no less humiliating.

A waiter arrives at our table to clear our table. Once he's gone, I pull my chair up over to the railing and beckon to Yuudachi to do the same, and together we sit looking out to the evening ocean. Since it's summer, when the hours are longer, even now, the sky is reddened, and the ocean looks just as beautiful as my wife, with the clouds parting just perfectly to contrast against the autumnal colors of the sky.

Yuudachi leans her head against my shoulder and gives a great sigh of nostalgia.

"It's times like these when I wish I could go out to sea again," Yuudachi says with melancholy. I put my arm around her shoulder, and she cuddles up more comfortably with me. I'm aware of the longing feelings she has about someday going out to sea again. After our duties were done and she was officially retired, Yuudachi slowly started to miss being able to sail everyday, to the point where she asked me to consider putting her back into active military service. I managed to dissuade her from it, using our children as the biggest reason to deter her, but even still, like her own call of the wild, whenever she looks at the ocean like this, she longs to go out there one more time.

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, we've got that summer camp in the Navy. You could wait until then," I point out.

"Yeah, that's a good point, poi," she nods. "But...I just really wanna sail out there by myself. Or with the kids."

She looks up at me.

"And...with you, too."

I can see the hope brimming in her eyes, but the two of us know that that much is impossible.

"Maybe with the kids. But forget about me," I shake my head with a sad smile. "I mean, unless you're talking about sailing out on a boat..."

Yuudachi remains silent for a bit.

"...no, not that. I actually mean, you sailing out to sea with us. Every one of us, as a family," Yuudachi says quietly. "There's got to be a way, poi. There's got to be."

I shrug, grinning a bit. "Then I guess I'll just have to wait until then. But until then, I'm happy just the way we are."

Yuudachi nods, pulling herself out of her melancholy. "Yup! I'm the same way, poi~"

I rub my cheek against Yuudachi's, making her giggle a bit.

"I love you, honey," she whispers.

"I love you too, Yuudachi," I whisper back. "I'll always be your husband and commander."

"Poi~!"

We stay like this until the sky becomes dark and the stars begin to peek out one by one. Yuudachi eventually falls asleep, and I don't want to get up, even though the restaurant itself is going to close soon. This is one of my inner otaku fantasies, having a beautiful wife to spend moments like this with and to know that I would have someone like Yuudachi to spend the rest of my life with. And now, it's actually true. Yuudachi is that girl for me.

I give my wife a small kiss on her temple, and she smiles in her sleep.


	18. Roomba

I wake up today after my lovely little date with my wife at the sounds of shrieks of children. It's only seven in them morning (I say that as though I've never woken up earlier in my life), and because we came home late at night yesterday, I'm still quite sleepy. Yuudachi is still sleeping soundly next to me in her comfortable tank top and cute panties (there must truly be a benevolent God or Kami-sama or whatever for me to be blessed with a wife with this particular fashion sense), so I just put my arm around her and tuck my chin in against her forehead, not really paying much attention to the shrieks that the twins have made. I just pass it off as their usual morning shenanigans, nothing to be too excited about.

Without warning, I hear our bedroom door fly open in an explosion of yelling and excited shrieking. Before I can even bolt upright in my bed to see what the heck is going on, I turn just in time towards the door to see three kids soaring across the room, straight at me and Yuudachi.

Wait, three?

"Ooof!"

Yuudachi and I get pelted by three bodies, and the shrieking and barking of our puppies also enter the room as Ishii and Hisashi, riled up by the excitement, bound in, wanting to play and have fun too and bounce up onto our bed, constantly barking and shrieking for attention.

"Tou-san, Tou-san~! ! !" Sandachi screams excitedly. Sandachi has always been quite hyper, but I haven't seen her _this _hyper in quite some time. What is going on?

"S-Sandachi? What's going on, sweetie?" Yuudachi groans - Yuudahachi just sat on her face, and she sits up in bed, rubbing her noise while Yuudahachi is profusely apologizing and hugging her mother's midriff, horrified at what she's done.

There is, however, another girl lying on our bedsheets in between me and Yuudachi, looking up at us. She's got light brown hair in a ponytail tied up by a small little anchor hair ornament.

Light brown hair...anchor...wait a minute...

"Good morning, Colonel~!"

The perpetrator herself shows herself. Murasame now stands before us in the doorway.

"M-Murasame!?" I yell out in surprise, and she gives the two of us a naughty look.

"Oooooh, my, were we interrupting something~?" she asks in a very suggestive manner. "If that's the case, then we can always come back another day~"

"Murasame-onee-chan!" Yuudachi has other plans, though, and she tumbles out of bed and runs over to give her older sister a hug.

"Yuu~dachi~chan~" Murasame sings, cuddling her younger sister in her arms and swaying her to and fro. "It's been a while~! How have you been doing?"

As Murasame starts to press Yuudachi's cheeks together with her palms and wag her head back and forth, chibi Murasame looks up at me and says,

"Otou-san!"

I shake my head rapidly. "No, no no no no, I'm not your daddy, I don't know where your daddy is - "

"I know! He's at home!" Chibi Murasame nods.

"Then why're you calling me 'Otou-san'?"

"Because here, you're Otou-san, Otou-san!"

I think she's trying to say that in this house, since I'm the dad, I'm everyone's dad. I think...I'm not sure, I could be wrong. I look up nervously at Murasame, hoping that she won't take offense to that.

"Yeah, that's right! Tou-san is Tou-san!" Sandachi laughs. Hisashi, our Shiba Inu pup, recognizing Chibi Murasame's scent, jumps into her lap and pokes her tummy with his nose, and Chibi Murasame squeals in excitement and starts petting Hisashi.

"Puppy, puppy!" she cries, and Hisashi looks up at her and makes a small shriek that Shiba Inus make. "Waaaaaaaah~ so cuuuuuuuuuute~!"

Murasame, watching us with Yuudachi, starts chuckling too. "My little one loves your puppies, Colonel. She always begs her parents to get her a puppy too, just like her cousins, but our landlord doesn't let us keep pets because of the neighbors."

"Well, before that, let's get dressed, hm?" I suggest, since my wife and I are still in our bedclothes, and Murasame is dressed in a lovely blue blouse and some skinny jeans that make her look like a fashion model straight out of Tokyo's best talent agencies. "Er, sorry, but - "

"Oh, don't mind me," Murasame grins with another chuckle. "I work with clothes everyday, so don't hesitate~"

Man, she's quite the bold one.

Murasame wasn't part of our detachment during the war, but oftentimes she visited our base for joint base practices with the other ship girls in her own unit, so she was able to maintain a close relationship with Shigure and Yuudachi and Harusame. All the Shiratsuyu-Class destroyers kept close contacts with each other as well as they could, for that matter. After the war, Murasame, like my own wife and her own sister, ended up marrying her own handler, First Lieutenant Sanada, whose name I heard occasionally here and there back in active duty. Once retired, Murasame was able to enroll at Todai, and thanks to the small family fortune of her husband, whose family produced said fortune from good investment in stocks, Murasame herself was able to graduate as a major in Fashion Designs and has worked to establish her own brand, the Anchor Breeze line of designer jeans and cardigans. From what Yuudachi tells me from her phone calls with her sister, Murasame is soon planning to expand to home interior designs as well, perhaps including things like carpets, window drapes, and even decorative anchors. She's become quite successful, so much so that I even read an article about her in the newspaper that hailed her as the new fashion phenomenon in the Tokyo region, and it appears that her brand is slowly but surely rising in popularity and spreading throughout the nation. I've seen her products; they instill a vivid sense of the sea in the viewer, understandably so - I believe that Murasame strives to blend sea themes and rain themes with cosmic themes like stars and universes and things of that nature. The descriptions of her items themselves claim that they are meant to invoke a sense of peace, or to quote, "help you feel as though you yourself are sitting on the beach, looking out at the sea and the stars of the night sky". Don't ask me how I remember all that.

"So how's your business doing, Murasame?" I ask our guest. Yuudachi is calling their sister Shigure on the phone as she's cooking breakfast, and we're sitting in the living room on our big couch, watching our kids play with the puppies.

"Wonderfully~!" Murasame replies with a pretty cute tilt of her head. Even though she's the same age as Yuudachi, she gives off the sense that she's actually quite older, something that she apparently takes much pride in. "I've actually signed a contract recently that'll showcase my brand in next month's fashion shows down in Hirakata City. You know, Osaka. if it does well there, then I'll have a good chance to have a good consumer base in two major commercial regions in the country."

"Sounds like a lot of work."

Murasame chuckles. "Not as much work as we had done during the war. Compared to fighting, I feel like I can do anything, really."

I nod, agreeing. "I know what you mean. Putting so much effort into fighting, and then afterwards, it's like - everything gets so much easier, doesn't it?"

"Specifically, it was those times when we had to battle for our lives," Murasame murmurs, and I notice that her eyes are slowly rolling off to the side, a sign that she is reminiscing on the past. "I'll always remember those times. We were all so scared, everything was so intense and cutthroat, and one mistake could end any of us. Being in that kind of a pressure environment so many times makes everything else almost irrelevant. You don't ever put in your all, your one-hundred-and-twenty percent effort, into anything unless you're fighting for your life, you know? And once you've done that enough, you feel like everything you do starts becoming a matter of life and death, so you always have to try your absolute hardest, even though you don't even need to. That's how I graduated with top honors within two years after having my little baby."

"Just goes on to show how amazing you girls are," I remark.

Murasame smiles back at me. "Thank you, Colonel, for the kind complement, but I think it's more a testament to the ability of humans in general. We were normal humans too, once. I don't think I need to remind you that we have all kept at least some of our humanity with us intact over the years."

"I know. I see that in Yuudachi every single day."

"Is she treating you alright?"

"Couldn't be better. Your sister's a godsend."

"Tou-san, Tou-san!" Sandachi yells at me to get my attention, and Murasame and I look down at the kids. Sandachi is grabbing onto Yuudahachi's wrists as the older twin lies on the floor on her back, with Ishii the Golden Lab pup standing on her belly, and Chibi Murasame is mimicking Yuudahachi, only this time with Hisashi the Shiba Inu pup on her own tummy and grabbing hold of Yuudahachi's ankles. "Lookie, lookie!"

As we watch, Sandachi begins towing Yuudahachi and Chibi Murasame around, dragging them round and round in circles in the living room in front of the television. Yuudahachi is giggling all the while, and Chibi Murasame is making some kind of unintelligible rumbling sound with her lips. Ishii and Hisashi look like they have no idea what in the world is going on, but because it's fun and stuff is happening, they're having fun too, so they bark and shriek as usual. The sight is so cute that Murasame and I can't help but smile.

"Girls, what is this? What are you doing?" she asks sweetly. In response, her daughter, Chibi Murasame, yells out,

"Roomba! Roomba!"

At this, Murasame and I, at the exact same time, burst out howling in laughter. I don't think Murasame knows why, and neither do I. We both find this the most hilarious thing on the planet.

"What's going on?! Is there something fun going on!?" Yuudachi, the main troublemaker, hops out of the kitchen to see what we're up to just as the doorbell rings. "Ah, that's Shigure! Hold on~!"

A half minute later, she returns with Shigure, who's also brought along her own daughter, Kiri-chan, and Marisa the tabby cat, wearing her usual white-and-black witch's hat on her head.

"Murasame!" Shigure's face lights up with joy as Murasame jumps out of the couch to run over and give her sister a warm hug. "Oh, this is - this is quite unexpected. When did you come? You should have told us! We could have had some breakfast together!"

"I decided to stop by since I was in the area. One of my manufacturers lives here, so I drove down here to sign some papers with her," Murasame explains.

Sandachi, noticing that Kirisame has come along, dashes over and takes her hand to lead over to have some fun with them in the living room, and Marisa the tabby cat meows and licks her paw.

"What are the kids doing...?" Shigure asks in a tone mixed with worry and amusement.

"Yeah, what are they doing, Colonel?" Yuudachi asks me too.

"Murasame-chan, what's this you're doing? Tell your auntie~!" I urge, pointing at Shigure and Yuudachi, so Chibi Murasame gives the answer again as Sandachi resumes dragging Yuudahachi and herself in circles in the living room.

"ROOMBA~! ROOOOOOOMBA~!" the elated and laughing shrieks once again ring out.

Yuudachi busts her gut howling in laughter, and Shigure, not immune to the cuteness of our kids, doubles over, trying desperately to stifle her own laughing fit with a hand over her mouth. Just another day full of evidence that no one, not even us parents, are immune to the sugar poisoning epidemic known as our children.


	19. Scratchy Lullaby

With Murasame's sudden visit with her own daughter, Shigure called Harusame, who happened to be visiting the nearby park with her family again, so Tangan-san drove over with them to our home to join us shortly. Now, as the ladies are gathered in the kitchen and preparing a breakfast that will probably be so hearty that none of us can finish all the food, Tangan-san, my younger brother, and I sit in the living room keeping an eye on the kids and our pets.

"And then, and then!" Sandachi is telling her friends a fantastic story about this awesome dream last night. "And then, I opened the door, and then, and then!"

"And then?" Harukyu is leaning forward with great enthusiasm. She's actually extremely gripped by this story - or perhaps it's more because Sandachi is just speaking in a very bombastic manner.

"And then, there were _huuuuuuuge _piles of candy inside!" Sandachi yells.

"_Piles _of candy!?" Yuudahachi exclaims. "How big, Sandachi-chan?"

"Like, like, like, _thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis _big!" Sandachi makes a big ol' circle motion with both of her arms, making the girls wow. "There was enough candy for me to eat for days! So many days, hahahaha~!"

"Candy...mmmmmuuu, I'm hungry..." Harukyu whines sadly.

"Did you eat breakfast?" Yuudahachi asks.

"Y-Yeah, but...but I'm still hungry..."

"Mom's making breakfast with the other Aunties, so wait just a little longer, Harukyu," Tangan-san calls reassuringly from the couch. He's reading the morning newspaper that we got in our mailbox that he brought in for us upon arriving, so I told him he could read it first if he'd like.

Kiri-chan and and Haruni are hanging out and having a good time with our pets. As stated before, since Harusame's family doesn't own any pets like we or Shigure's family do, Harusame's kids are always thrilled to visit us, or any place that has pets. Kiri-chan, since she adores our puppies, is rubbing her cheeks against the top of Ishii's fuzzy head as he purrs with amusement, and Haruni reaches out a shy hand to Marisa the tabby cat with the hat, and Marisa taps her hand with her paw, causing Haruni to squeal happily and repeat the process all over again. Reach, touch, squeal, repeat! Reach, touch, squeal, repeat!

Now that Sandachi's story is concluded, Harukyu focuses her attention on our pets. Reaching over and picking up Inukai, Shigure's St. Bernard puppy, who is lying on the living room floor napping, Harukyu cocks her head as she looks at her, and he lifts one sleepy eyelid to look back at her.

"Are you sleepy, Inukai-saaaan~?" Harukyu asks in a cute voice, and Inukai blinks back at her. She draws him closer to her, and Inukai sticks out his tongue and licks her nose, making her giggle. "Ehehehee~you shoooo cuuuuuutteeee..."

Inukai licks her nose again.

Speaking of licking, Hisashi is back to licking Sandachi's peachy hair ends again. Our own puppies are not immune to Sandachi's appealing hair, and Hisashi is not only licking the ends of Sandachi's hair but is also sniffing it and making strange Shiba Inu noises at it. Now that she's done storytelling, Sandachi turns around to give him her attention and picks him up too.

"I love you, Hisashi~ I love you, I love you, I reaaaaaaally love you~" Sandachi sings, reclining on her back on the floor and setting Hisashi on her chest. Hisashi, at first standing on her chest, makes his little _"eeeeek!" _mini-screams at Sandachi, who laughs every time he does so, before he indulges himself in another sniffing session, burying his snout into Sandachi's face. Sandachi is very ticklish when it comes to our puppies' antics, so she just laughs and rolls a bit from side to side as Hisashi just keeps sniffing her. It's probably because of her hair that he's doing this. After a few frantic minutes of lovable sniffing, Hisashi finally settles down and relaxes, resting his head on Sandachi's collar as my younger daughter rubs his back with both of her hands.

Chibi Murasame is sitting with Yuudahachi, who is now playing with Chibi Murasame's hair. For reasons nobody is able to explain, Chibi Murasame has taken a great liking to Yuudahachi and always seeks her attention. Today, she is lucky, for Yuudahachi happens to have nothing better to do, so a very satisfied Chibi Murasame is having her hair played with by her bestest friend ever. Yuudahachi always likes to play with her twin sister's hair, as though she too is attracted to her hair like the doggies, minus the sniffing and licking parts. So she has plenty of fun rearranging Chibi Murasame's hair into all kinds of cute hairdos.

"I didn't really expect this morning to turn into a brunch," Tangan-san sighs, putting down the newspaper.

"It's nice, though, isn't it?" Shintaro shrugs. "Having breakfast all together? It's refreshing, don't you think?"

"Hm. I suppose I can agree to that."

My brother turns to me. "Hey, Tora-nii, I heard from Shigure that Murasame is a pretty well-known designer. That true?"

"Yeah, from what Yuudachi tells me."

"You think we could manage a deal with her?"

I shrug. "I dunno. You could try asking her, right?"

"I guess. But you know me - I'm no good when it comes to talking to other women. Plus, Murasame is smoking hot, too. Shigure might be getting the wrong idea if I don't tell her I want to talk business."

"I mean, if you prefer Shigure to be yandere, then go ahead, I'm not stopping you."

"No, please, I didn't - "

"I'll be at your funeral telling you it's a nice boat you just boarded."

Shintaro just shakes his head, stifling a laugh. "Just...just no, Tora-nii. Don't. Bad brother."

I laugh too. "Sorry, couldn't resist. But yeah, we could talk about it after breakfast, y'know?"

"Thanks."

"If you need me to handle that, I can do it," Tangan-san sets down the newspaper. "I can strike out a pretty mean deal myself."

"Er, I get the feeling you're just going to scare her, Tangan-san..."

"Oh, no, not at all. Just believe in me, Boss."

It's actually quite funny to me that I get to be in a position of enlightenment, that Murasame could probably kick Tangan-san's butt because of her former occupation as a ship girl. But obviously I have to keep that part quiet.

Then, Sandachi crawls over to me by pushing herself across the floor with her feet, her back still dragging against the ground, as I watch her with a blank look on my face.

"Tou-saaaan..." she drawls out, "play with my haaaairrrr~" she reaches her hands upwards and lifts up several locks of her hair to offer them up to me.

As a father of such lovely twins, I cannot back down. This is my duty as a father, and I take my duties as a father more seriously than anything else in the world, because I am a proud father. And this is what proud fathers do: play with their daughters' hair.

First, I begin by removing Hisashi from Sandachi's chest. I make sure to lift up our puppy in a manner that won't make him shriek in our ears and blast our eardrums out, pressing my thumbs as gently as possible against his chest. Then, I set him down on the carpeted living room floor, and because he is a little agitated that he's been taken away from his own momma, I calm him by giving him a little tummy rub that gets him all lethargic and lazy. Once he is sedated, only then can I focus on my daughter. I pull Sandachi up and sit her down on my lap. Once she gets comfortable, I proceed to work my magic.

First, the head scratch. The head scratch is designed to get the twins in a relaxed state so that the skin on their heads won't get irritated as easily when I start playing with their hair. For each of my daughters, there are specific zones on their heads that I must scratch in order for them to relax the quickest and easiest. It begins with a few gentle scratches behind their ears. For Sandachi, it's the right ear first, then left - the reverse is true for Yuudahachi. One set of this, then I scratch both ears at the same time. A little squeal is emitted from Sandachi's tongue, indicating that all is well. Then, I move my hands up to the top of her head and use all ten fingernails to dig into her peachy blonde hair and rest them against her skin, raking them downwards simultaneously at a moderate pace like the teeth of a comb. After about three or four swipes like this, Sandachi lets out a satisfied sigh, the second checkpoint. After another four or five of these scratches, I then scratch the front of her scalp, near her bangs, and then return to the comb-like motions, but this time, instead of scratching the skin gently with my fingernails, I simply press the soles of my fingertips against her skin and swipe them downwards again, as though I am massaging her head.

"...just what on Earth are you doing?" Tangan-san asks me, with suspicion in his voice. For someone who hasn't seen me work my magic before, this may seem quite strange, but my brother thankfully covers for me.

"He's just taking care of the twins. You'll see, just watch," he assures him.

Sandachi is now purring like a puppy herself, which means that she's ready for the next stage.

Next is the hair. I begin again with the comb swipes with my fingers, but instead of limiting myself to just her head, I start with my fingers in the folds of her hair near the back of her neck and then sweep them as far down as her hair can reach. I start slowly, and then slowly accelerate to the bottom, and I also make sure to evenly distribute my combing motions so that I comb the entire width of her hair at some point. Sandachi purrs again, and now she starts to lean back and rub her back of her head against my chest. This means that she's really feeling it now, but this doesn't mean I can stop here. As she rubs her head against my shirt, I pinch a small lock of her hair in between my index finger and thumb for each hand and begin rubbing. I rub them together for a few minutes, and Sandachi purrs one last time. Her eyes are closed, and she has a very silly smile on her face, like the face of one who has eaten one too many chocolate bars without regret.

Finally, the massage. I put my hands back on her head again and very gently press my fingertips against different sections of her skull. Most of the time, where I place my fingertips is random, but I do know a few massage points on both Sandachi's and Yuudahachi's heads that, if I press them, they'll really like it. So to make sure they enjoy their massages the most, I make sure to press those sweet spots every fifth or sixth press. If I press said sweet spots for too long or too many times in a row, they'll lose their potency, and it'll actually start irritating them. But so long as I keep this in mind, this final massage is the kicker. By the time I am done, Sandachi is fast asleep, mumbling happy, satisfied gibberish in her sleep.

"...you made her go to sleep?" Tangan-san whispers in a hushed, amazed tone. I never thought I'd live to see the day when he would ever speak like that to me. "How did you do that?"

"Family secrets," I snicker, giving Tangan-san a mischievous little grin.

"Tell me!" he demands, but he keeps his voice low out of respect for my daughter's beauty nap. "I have to deal with Harukyu refusing to go to sleep during some nights. If I have this trick, it'll make my job a lot easier!"

"Ask your wife how to do it. I'm sure she knows how to pull it off."

"But...she's never done anything like that before."

"Yeah, well...trust her. She'll figure something out."

Yuudahachi, having seen me play with her sister's hair, now crawls over to me.

"Daddy, Daddy..." she smiles shyly, reaching out her hands to me, "me too, me too."

By the time breakfast is ready, my twins are both fast asleep.

"Are you a wizard, Colonel?" Tangan-san asks me in a totally serious voice, and my brother and I just both laugh.


	20. Pileup

Breakfast is eaten and cleared; everyone is back in our comfortable living room. There's a late morning program that's more or less a fun little running documentary on the dogs of certain people and their daily lives as they live in the Japanese countryside in Hokkaido, so naturally the kids have their eyes glued to the screen. Ishii, Hisashi, and Marisa also watch, very interested in the dogs they're seeing in the screen while sitting in the laps of the kids. Inukai doesn't really care, since he's napping and snoring slightly while curled up on Harukyu's lap.

Our wives are sitting on the sofa while we husbands are seated randomly on the carpeted floor. I myself am sitting right in front of Yuudachi - in fact, she's got my neck in a leglock giving _me _a head rub, which I like a lot myself. I suppose the twins inherited their love of head rubs from me - but then again, Yuudachi loves head rubs too. I guess the both of us, then. Tangan-san is sitting with his daughters, pointing at the screen and naming the breeds of dogs and cats on the TV to the kids. For someone who's so adamant about not having pets in his household, he sure knows a whole heck of a lot about them. Shintaro is feeding mikan pieces to Kiri-chan, who looks like she's in heaven. She absolutely loves mikan.

"We're planning on moving soon," I hear Murasame say to her sisters on the couc, so I decide to eavesdrop.

"Oh...you mean the, the house you and your husband lived in...since marriage?" Harusame asks softly.

"Yeah, that's the one."

"Moving out...I thought...that house was quite lovely. I liked it...when we visited."

"I mean, I do too. It's just...my husband and I feel like we need to move to a bigger house so that we can start keeping pets of our own too."

"Ah, Lieutenant Sanada loved all kinds of pets, didn't he, poi?" Yuudachi remembers, which is true. "He even had a hamster in his office at one point, didn't he?"

"Yup!" Murasame giggles. "He always used to play with it in between reports. He practically let it run around on his desk while he was working. Everyone loved it."

"But to move to another house entirely just so that you can keep pets..." Shigure murmurs with concern, "that seems...well, I don't want to say wasteful, but..."

"No, I know what you mean, Nee-san. We weren't going to move out if it was only one pet or two we were going to get. But you know my husband, right? He _loves _animals. He told me that once we retired from active service, one day we would move into a house so that we could keep lots of pets. We didn't get to keep pets of our own because, well, of my university and having my daughter, but now that everything's done and we both have secure careers, we agreed that now would be a good time to think about moving out."

"But how many pets are we talking about here?" I can't help but to ask up and join the conversation. "I knew Lieu - er, wait, he's also a Colonel like me, right?"

Murasame giggles. "Yep, he is."

"Right. So I knew Colonel Sanada loved pets. But just how many does he want? You make it sound like he's planning on buying a whole division of puppies or something."

"He said, and I quote, 'no less than five puppies and five kittens'," Murasame laughs, and all three of her sisters wow at this. My jaw just drops in horror instead.

"Wow...what a loving husband~" Harusame swoons, giggling softly as ever. "I wish my...my husband could also get us a pet too. For our kids..."

"I can hear you, honey..." Tangan-san groans, "don't blame me, blame my allergies..."

All the adults chuckle at Tangan-san's excuse.

Meanwhile, I'm just sitting here shuddering at the thought of my house being overrun by _ten _puppies and kittens, _on top of _my twins. Yuudachi can feel the vibrations of my shuddering on her thighs and leans over.

"Colonel? What's wrong, poi?" she asks me in a playful tone, and I look back up at her with sheer horror in my face.

"T-T-Ten p-puppies and k-kittens..." I stammer like I really do have post-traumatic stress disorder. "Th-The horror...the horror..."

At this, both Shigure and Harusame laugh quite a bit. It's definitely the hardest I've seen Harusame laugh like that in a while. Yuudachi feigns a little frenzy herself and starts shaking me by my shoulders back and forth so that my head goes flop flop my neck.

"Nooooo, Colonel! You can't die just because of two puppies and two daughters!" my wife mock-wails while also flopping her own head about, calling up to the ceiling. "You said that you'd survive all of our combined love! Just the thought of having more pets can't kill you, right?!"

I continue to keep up my little mock show. "The horror...! You don't understand!" I put my hands over my head. Not like this!

Shigure and Harusame keep having giggling fits. Murasame, while she's smiling with amusement, finds this much less funny because she doesn't know the antics that go down in our household, since she doesn't live as close to us as the other two do.

"I-Is there something wrong with...having lots of pets?" Murasame asks sheepishly. I think she may be thinking that we're somehow teasing her about the fact that her husband and she are contemplating getting lots of pets. "Well...besides the fact that normal people don't get ten pets, admittedly..."

"No, no no no, that's not it, Murasame," I quickly snap out of my play-acting to reassure her. "It's just that I have so many war stories to share with you about my own pets that it's almost borderline PTSD for me to even think about getting more pets. It's very stressful."

Murasame frowns. "Oh...well, I was aware that owning pets was a big responsibility, but my husband said that he would make sure to take care of them, since he, like you, really only works from home managing stocks...but since you've had pets for much longer, and you only have two..."

"Well, no, I meant that _normal _pets - normal pets won't give you a hard time. I'm sure Sanada can take care of as many pets as he wants," I quickly revise my statement. "It's just _mine _tend to...well..."

"Here, I'll show you, poi!" Yuudachi offers, and before I can stop her, she whistles. Ishii and Hisashi, along with our twins Yuudahachi and Sandachi, bolt up in response. "Take Tou-san for a walk, girls!"

_"Okay!" _they both scream, and before I can get up to run away from my own kids, my twins dash over to me, seize me by my shirt shoulders, and start dragging me.

"No, wait, Yuudachi, no, you two, stop, stop, stooooooooooooooo ~ !" My voice trails away as my own two daughters begin pulling me like reindeer, while the puppies jump on my stomach and hang on for the sleigh ride as my twins start dragging me round and round, from the living room, into the short hallway, into the kitchen, into the dining room, then to the living room, and loop de loop de loop de loop. My screams of horror constantly echo through our house as my daughters take me on the Tour de Japan - except revised to fit in our own home.

Finally, after some twenty laps or so, the twins, pooped out, collapse onto the living room floor, and the puppies dizzily plop onto the floor as well off my stomach. I'm just dead. I don't even move after that. Yuudachi comes over to me and crouches down in front of me.

"Colonel? Coloneeeeel~?" she asks, poking me on the top of my head. "Are you alive still, poi?"

I don't even bother answering back. I'm already dead.

Murasame is quite literally crying. So is Harusame, and Shigure is wincing because her cheeks hurt from smiling so much.

Then, Yuudachi peels me off the floor and sits down on the floor with me, putting the back of my head against her soft chest.

"There, there. The poi poi'll help you get all better~" Yuudachi sings playfully, rocking me back and forth like I'm a baby. I'm a bit too tired to respond, but I still do manage a chuckle.

"Thanks, Yuudachi. Murasame, you see what I mean?" I ask our guest, and Murasame struggles to even give me a response.

"Y-Yeah...haha..." she tries desperately to stifle her lingering laughter.

"Oh, oh! Look!" my brother then calls out, and when we see what he's pointing at, we see both Yuudahachi and Sandachi, both very drowsy after expending so much energy in a short period of time, sprawl about on the floor and start to snooze off. Yuudahachi curls up all nice and comfy on the soft carpet floor, while Sandachi just eagle-sprawls her arms and legs everywhere next to her. Ishii and Hisashi, also feeling the need to catch a few snores from being so dizzy, crawl over to Yuudahachi to take shelter in her body heat and also curl up with her.

"Mmmuu...sleepy..." Kiri-chan, watching them go to sleep, also yawns and crawls over to the two and joins them, settling herself right underneath Sandachi's left arm and rolling over to her side to cuddle up with her friend.

"Oh, me too, me too~" Harukyu squeals, and jumping off Tangan-san's lap, she starts rolling over to her friends and cousins and stops abruptly next to Yuudahachi and our puppies, curling up on the other side with the puppies safely nestled in between. Haruni also creeps up on her hands and feet and imitates Sandachi, eagle-sprawling on the carpet.

Chibi Murasame is already fast asleep in front of the TV, so Shintaro gently drags her over so that she can join her cousins. So now we have an entire pileup of daughters and doggies all snoring away in the middle of the day, in the middle of my living room.

"Awwww...this is so cute..." Murasame coos, gasping like a fangirl and quickly pulling out her smartphone to snap a picture of this. "My husband would love this...what should I name it..."

"Call it the destroyer pileup," I mutter, "'cause it's gonna take the repair crews _years _to repair this mess."

All of the destroyers burst into laughter at the same time. Only military people like us would find a joke like that funny, but that's all I care about.

"I'm glad you decided to come visit, Murasame," Shigure says happily. "Normally, it was just us three living in this area, so we don't really have very many chances to speak to our other sisters."

"I know, right? It's definitely nowhere near as much as how much we used to talk while we were still in service..." Murasame muses.

"We should...arrange a class reunion," Harusame suggests.

"Class reunion?"

Harusame nods. "All of us...Shiratsuyu-Class, have a big family reunion. In the park. I think...it would be fun. Lots of fun. For the kids, too."

Murasame snaps her fingers. "I can arrange for a good venue. I have business partners who owe me a few favors, so I can call them in. I know just the spot."

"Oh? Where'll it be? Tell me, tell me, poi!" Yuudachi barks excitedly, but Murasame only gives her a devious look.

"It's a surprise, but I think we'll all like it," Murasame giggles.


	21. Old Uniform

I set down my pen and pat the papers together into one small neat stack to slip inside a manila folder on my desk. I have a small, separate room on the second floor of the house that acts as my study, or my office, or whatever you'd like to call it. It's there I get my work done as a decommissioned officer of the JMSDF.

Normally it is against JMSDF protocol to still be an active officer in the navy and yet be able to work from home; this is normally a privilege enjoyed only by the navy committee members and the very highest ranking officers of the JMSDF. But I, among other officers in the navy during the time of the Abyssal War, were granted special exemptions.

I don't like going too in depth with the war. Everyone who knows about the war can agree that that's been the closest the world's ever gotten to destabilizing global society. The Abyssals - they were an enemy very few understood, to this day. We don't even know why they started attacking or where they even came from. We just knew that they intended to destroy humanity. Or, at least, that's what we all told ourselves to believe.

Officially, the navy and the government recognized the efforts of people like me, the commanding officers of the ship girls who were created out of select girls from around the country through heavy and intensive genetic surgeries and modifications. According to them, we led the navy to our ultimate victory eight years ago. We were the ones who were rewarded, the ones who were hoisted up on a national pedestal for all of the rest of the country to see and revere. Naturally, neither the government nor the navy said anything about the ship girls themselves.

I can't be too harsh, however. The ship girls, like I've mentioned before, were quite literally a black ops project. There could very well be riots in the streets if word got out to the public about how the JMSDF had taken orphan girls from around the country and secretly forced them to be put into the ship girl program so that we could "put their lives to use", according to one JMSDF admiral that nobody liked, for good reason. So the existence of ship girls can't really be leaked to the public, much less celebrate their achievements. Thankfully, the ship girls themselves didn't mind; all they wanted to do is return to civilian life after the war, which we, their officers, have helped them do for the most part by marrying many of them, such as myself, for example.

In any case, my point is that every single officer who commanded any unit of the ship girls program was granted special navy privileges that included effectively being able to work from home. It's always been a secret wish of mine to be able to work from home, so I jumped on the opportunity as soon as I was able, and ever since the end of the war, I work as an overseer of lots of the shipping traffic that comes into the Tokyo Bay. My rank as Colonel doubles my job as a remote security guard of sorts, for I make sure there's nothing counterfeit coming into the country through the shipping containers and make sure the on-site security for the ports around Tokyo Bay are in order. Basically, I'm the guy they call when something related to security happens over there at the ports, so it's not uncommon for me to wake up to the house phone ringing like mad at three or four in the morning because some stray cat set off the proximity alarm or something. Other officers received similar posts, taking up jobs that seem civilian on the outside but may have military undertones that are directly related to naval work in some fashion.

I fit the manila folder back onto its appropriate folder rack on my desk and sigh. I usually work in the morning, but due to the nature of my job, I literally can work whenever I want, a freedom that I'm sure not very many people in the world can say they possess. This makes my life much easier, especially once our twins were born, since I can put my kids and my wife first before my work if need be, a luxury I've been able to use many times in the past and many more times in the future. Plus, it's not like the work itself is all that intensive; I've done office work back in high school, so this kind of stuff wasn't too unfamiliar. Though, since I've been doing this for about eight years now, I've got it down to a science so that every morning, I typically wake up at around nine, start work by ten, and finish by noon. Two hour workdays...such a luxury. Of course, I make nowhere near as much as my younger brother, who owns his own company, but it's far from a strapped living; in fact, it's very comfortable.

Speaking of very comfortable, I hear a few knocks on my door. Judging by the strength and the deepness of the knocks, I can tell it's my wife.

"Yeah, Yuudachi? It's fine to come in," I call, and the door opens. And in pounces -

"Coloneeeeeeeeel~!"

Yuudachi flies at me and shoves her chest into my face before I can stop her. For some reason, she's wearing her old ship girl uniform, the same exact one she wore back in the war.

"Colonel, Colonel, I got good news, poooooi~!" she cries, shaking me in my chair. Little does she know that with her strength, she's suffocating me with her chest alone. Though, as a man, I've got to say it's not such a bad way to go.

But Yuudachi realizes this soon enough and gets off me, and I'm able to catch my breath.

"Ahem, ahem...er, so, Yuudachi, why - why are you wearing your old uniform?" I ask, coughing a little. She's still kept her old uniform, even after all these years, because she claims she can't bear to part with them. On some odd days, she'll even put it on sometimes, just for old times' sake, but the grim reality is that she's far outgrown them, so the top just barely covers her motherly bits, and her skirt barely reaches halfway past her thighs.

"I felt like it!" Yuudachi announces proudly, throwing out her chest proudly as she is prone to do whenever she is feeling proud of herself. Unfortunately, whenever she wears her old uniform, her whole mentality seems to revert back to her old ship girl self, before she became an adult, so there are two big ballast tanks that threaten to break free of their fabric fasteners. "I don't like it when I don't wear this in a long time. You know that, Colonel."

"Yes, I _do _know that, but like, if you want to wear your old uniform from time to time, couldn't we just get you a uniform size that actually fits you?" I ask, not knowing where to look. I know I shouldn't be feeling guilty - after all, Yuudachi's my own wife. But still, we've got kids, and knowing them, they might break into my office too while they're in the middle of a hide-and-seek match.

"Aw, I don't wanna, poi!" Yuudachi frets, shaking her fists up and down. "This uniform's special! I don't wanna get rid of it! We've talked about this, Colonel!"

"Yeah, yeah, I know, we have, honey. But c'mon, it's several sizes too small. You're too big for it now."

"Well, I don't mind if it's too small! Even if it rips, I can sew it back together! Shigure's been teaching me how to sew, you know! I'm not afraid to show you what I've learned, poi!"

"I'm, I'm not doubting your ability to sew, Yuudachi. It's not that."

Yuudachi puts her hands on her hips indignantly. "Then what is it, poi? What's the problem?"

"Do you really wanna know?"

"Of course, poi!"

I clear my throat. "Well...in case you haven't noticed, because your uniform's so small, some very important pieces of equipment of yours are showing a little more than they should."

Yuudachi looks down at her chest.

"And so?" she frowns. "You're my husband, colonel. I don't mind if you inspect them, you know."

I put my face in my hands. I can't believe it, but I have to admit that my wife is more mature than I am. I should just give up my man card right now.

"No, I..." I sigh heavily. "I don't think you understand, Yuudachi. You're so beautiful that I don't know where to look. There're just too many places where I _could_ look."

Waiting for Yuudachi's response, I find that I don't get any. A little confused, I pull my hands down and look up at my wife, and she stands there looking away from me, with a bright red face. Now that she knows I'm looking up at her, she raises an awkward hand and starts scratching at her cheek, not knowing what to say back to me.

"D-Don't say that, Sh - Shi - " Yuudachi is stuttering, and her hair flaps are bouncing frantically like an excited puppy's. "Sh-Shintora..."

I feel my heart doused in warmth. Hearing my wife say my real name, when she almost always calls me "Colonel", is enough to make me cough up blood from the sugar of Yuudachi's words.

"Then will you let me get you another uniform that fits you better?" I ask. Now is the time to be on the offense, when my wife has her guard lowered.

"N-No, wait, don't go off deciding things on your own...!" she firmly holds her ground, though. "Besides, y-you can't say things like that all of a sudden! That's not f-fair!" Yuudachi tries to cover her hair flaps to hide her excitement, but the instant she lets go of them, they keep bouncing friskily anyway, so Yuudachi has to hold them down.

I grin. "Then what do you want me to do, Yuudachi? Should I not call you beautiful, then? Do you not like it? If not, I can apol - "

"Pooooooi~!" Yuudachi flails her arms at me, reaching over to start bopping me on the head out of mock frustration. "No, no, no, no! Shintora, you idiot, idiot! You're just playing me now, aren't you?! Don't make fun of me, poooi!"

My wife can't be this cute when she's embarrassed. Forget large ballast tanks, I'd love my wife exactly like this even without them.

"No, but like, seriously, Yuudachi, I'd love to see you back in your old uniform, but the kids can't be seeing you like this," I point out wisely. "What'll they say? You know that they always like to mimic you. If you want to wear your old uniform from time to time, I don't mind, but we'll need something that fits you a little better. I'm not saying you should throw it away, I never have."

Yuudachi stops bopping me on the head and kneels down in front of me and buries her head into my abdomen, hugging me. Mind you, her hair flaps are still flapping up and down, unable to be calmed down.

"Do you mean it, Shintora...?" she asks me. "Even after all these years, um...do you still think I'm...?"

Chuckling quietly, I close my eyes and put my hands behind Yuudachi's head.

"'Course I do. I won't ever think you aren't. You're my wife, Yuudachi. What else could I ask for?"

I can feel Yuudachi's cheeks heat up against my lower chest.


	22. Ear Cleaning

It's been a few hours since I managed to convince Yuudachi to get out of her old ship girl uniform that's several sizes smaller than she can fit now. Things have calmed down, and she's put that uniform away for some better fitting clothes, but only with the promise that we'd eventually go visit a shop where we can get an enlarged version of the uniform. My only problem with that is the possibility that people may think this is some kind of weird fetish of ours to...well, make our nights more entertaining. I would assure those people that such things are _not _what we have in mind, but assumptions will always be made prematurely. It's rather unusual for a woman like Yuudachi to order a uniform like that to fit herself, and Yuudachi's biggest problem, as I've stated before, is the fact that she still hasn't necessarily grown out of her mental state from before we got married. I mean, obviously in many areas she _has _grown up, especially when our twins were born. But still, she holds onto some tendencies and habits of the past so naturally she isn't even embarrassed or ashamed of having them to this day at all. Sometimes I find myself being envious of her ability to simply keep being herself no matter how much time passes since her youth. It's certainly out of my own realm of expertise.

With my work done for the day, I have since relocated to our own bedroom and am sitting up against the front of the bed, comfortably nestled in between a few pillows, and reading a light novel, _Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei. _It's not really a guilty pleasure, but it's something that I'd picked up right when I finished high school and when I was posturing to enter the Navy. Since I couldn't really have the convenience of having a computer or even smartphone to carry around with me while I was on duty to watch anime, I had to resort to more traditional means of entertainment, mainly in book form, and light novels were the perfect solution for my entertainment needs during breaks or during downtime, as they were small, lightweight, and fun to read. And seeing that lots of them are being turned into animes anyway nowadays, it was more or less watching anime, just...instead of _watching _it, I was just _reading _it. And I didn't get in trouble with my superiors either, since I made sure to take off the cover flaps so that they would be none the wiser. Even now, after both my wife and I have been discharged from the Navy and gotten married, while I now have the luxuries to not only afford the means of watching anime but also the time to watch them, I still find myself more often than not reading light novels. Perhaps the biggest reason for it, though, is that Yuudachi loves to watch anime with me; the only problem is that Yuudachi loves watching action anime, _especially _shounen animes, and sometimes I'm not always in the mood for them, whereas Yuudachi will watch those until One Piece's circulation actually stops. So light novels are still a good way to consume stories that aren't necessarily so action-oriented all the time, and if I've got some time to myself and I've already read the newspaper, I'll read a light novel here or there.

I sigh out loud. I will say, though, that I do kind of miss reading light novels in my office back at our naval base during the Abyssal War. Sometimes the work of being a naval lieutenant during the war really wore me down, and my light novels were often the only things I could really look forward to to unwind for the day before the girls came back from their sorties. Now, whenever I do read these light novels, I don't quite get the same sense of relief and enjoyment out of them as I did before, back in my days as a lieutenant. Of course, reading them in the comfort of my own house, in my own bedroom and in my own bed is hard to beat, but it's hard to argue against the power of nostalgia. There's a little part of me that wishes that Yuudachi loved reading just as much as she loves watching anime. I know that Shigure loves to read too - she was the one who, back in our naval base, always asked if she could borrow my light novels after I was done reading them because she wanted to read them too, out of curiosity. There were even a few times when we ended up reading the same novel together, at the same time, in my office. While Yuudachi is cute and all, and I love her just the way she is, I can't deny that my bookworm side wishes that my wife could have just even a tiny amount of appreciation for books. But I've got no interest in compelling her to pick up a hobby that isn't in her interest. I didn't marry her so that she could fit into _my _conventions of an ideal wife.

As I turn the page, I hear sudden clompings around the house, rapidly approaching me. Our house is a single story house, so you can hear any loud noise in the house because the walls carry them through, including the running of the kids. The puppies can get away with romping around since they're still a little small (they're growing bigger by the day, though, don't get me wrong), but the kids can't do that any more, so I know exactly when they start causing a ruckus. In fact, so often have I heard them start running around that I can count down how long it takes for the twins to burst through the door of my bedroom to get my attention. All I need to do is count:

"...three...two...one..."

My bedroom door gets rammed open, and in fly Yuudahachi and Sandachi, who catapult themselves onto my bed, chased after by an excited Ishii and Hisashi who, liike always, follow after them in search of fun and exciting things to do.

"Tou-san, Tou-san!" Sandachi yelps first, scrambling up to me on the bed. I close my light novel and gaze at my cute daughters who are giving me this very expectant look, as the puppies also try to jump up to join them. They can't make the height of the bed by themselves, so Yuudahachi, ever so perceptive, turns to catch the puppies and pull them up for the remainder of the height they cannot jump up themselves.

"Yes? What can I do for you two?"

Sandachi suddenly whips out, seemingly from nowhere -

"WE WANT YOU TO CLEAN OUR EARS, POI!"

\- a pair of cotton swab ear picks.

I just start chuckling to myself. I don't know why, I just do. The twins see this, and understandably, their reaction isn't positive.

"We're not kidding, Daddy!" Yuudahachi frowns and pouts, along with her younger twin sister. "Mommy was outside cleaning our ears just now!"

Once I'm done chuckling, I start to frown. "Wait, then if Mom was doing that for you already, why're you coming to me?" I ask.

"Because she doesn't do it nearly as good as you do, Tou-san!" Sandachi clarifies. "So we want you to do it!"

Just then, Yuudachi barges into the room.

_"Heeey!" _she exclaims, looking far more distraught about this than she probably ought to be. "I heard that, you two! Are you trying to say I'm no good at this, poi?!"

The twins start to squeal in mock fright, now that they've been caught red-handed.

"B-But, but, Kaa-san!" Sandachi turns around to face their mother, "it's, it's just not the same! Tou-san, when he does it..."

"It feels great~!" Yuudahachi smiles wide and bright, a smile that warms my heart but stabs Yuudachi's.

"M-M-Mine doesn't?!" Yuudachi gawks at the twins. The twins glance at each other.

"Mommy is good," Yuudahachi replies, turning to their mother again, "but...Daddy...he's just...better."

"Uh-huh, uh-huh," Sandachi nods seriously, crossing her arms like this is one of the most important conversations she's had in her life. Well, generally speaking, given how little actual seriousness are behind most of the events in her life, it actually might _be _one of the most important conversations she's ever had.

Yuudachi pouts very hard at me.

"...honey, please don't look at me like that, it's not like I _wanted _to be better than you at this," I raise my hands in innocence. "Besides, I only remember doing this, like, once for them, ever! You've done the rest, right?"

"But then, how do they remember _that one time, _poi?!" she demands to know.

"The kids aren't dumb; they'll remember things they like," I shrug back. "You know this, Yuudachi. Or, at least, you should've had that in mind. I can't control those things."

I sit up on the bed to position myself cross-legged and pat my lap. "Okay, which of you's first?"

Immediately, both of the twins dive straight for my lap, and I feel the wonderful sensation of two miniature ships ramming their head armors at full speed into my abdomen, just above my pelvis. Such a combination of impacts would easily sink lesser men, but thankfully, my love for my children as a father saves me from outright sinking instantly.

"I asked first! I get to go first!" Sandachi whines.

"I'm older, so I go first!" Yuudahachi counters.

"Girls, girls, let's not fight over this. Yuudachi, come on, help me out here and take care of one of them," I ask my wife for assistance, who reluctantly does so, but since she's motivated to be better than me at this for some reason, I feel like, she hops onto the bed. "I'll take care of Sandachi first. She did ask first, you know."

Sandachi cheers at her success, while her older twin slumps in defeat. It actually saddens me a little, because Yuudahachi genuinely seems disappointed. So I put my hand on her head and pat her.

"It's okay, it'll be your turn next, okay?" I murmur reassuringly, and Yuudahachi perks up again, instantly revitalized.

"Mm! Okay, Daddy!" she nods happily, and she rolls over to her mother's lap across from me. Ishii copies her and rolls with her, as Hisashi walks around and curls up next to my left side, purring with the warmth of the bed that I've imprinted into it from reading my light novel.

I take one of the cotton ear picks that Sandachi has brought with her and lean over Sandachi's left ear, her head on my lap.

"Okay then, Sandachi, relax..." I coo at my younger twin daughter, and she nods with a big ol' grin on her face. As I insert the cotton swab into her ear, Sandachi starts to giggle at first at the sensation of the soft cotton tickling the innards of her ear canal, but once I start to slowly twist the pick about to collect the earwax, she begins to shudder. Soon, Sandachi, with her eyes closed, is purring with a wonky grin on her face, and her hair flaps are twitching like mad. When my arms and my back start to grow tired from hunching over Sandachi's head, I straighten up and rub Sandachi's hair flaps for a little bit before returning to my work. Once her right ear is cleaned, I have her turn over so I can work on her left ear.

By the end, when I'm finished, Sandachi is drooling and light-headed, mumbling incoherent purrings and nothings all the while. Her hair flaps, at first hyperactive in their twitching, are now drooped over, only occasionally twitching. To signify that I'm done, I blow lightly on Sandachi's left ear, which causes her whole body to twitch a little too.

"Okay, Sandachi, that's it," I announce. "Mom can handle you now. Yuudahachi, it's your turn."

"Yaaaay~" Yuudahachi gets up from her mom's lap and quickly crawls over to me, while Sandachi rolls lazily over to her mom to trade places.

Yuudachi is giving me another one of her cute pouts.

"Teach me," she mutters.

"Huh? Teach you?"

"I don't wanna have the kids go to you for this! I want them to come to _me!"_

I can't help but laugh. Rarely does Yuudachi ever get jealous of me because of the twins' attention, but I guess in this case, she does.


	23. Game Night

I ring the doorbell, carrying a few wrapped boxes in my left arm, and instantly, I can hear the light patterings of small feet dashing towards the door, with the appropriate calls for sortie:

_"Dad's here, Dad's here! Yaaaaaay!"_

The door gets swung open with such force that you'd think a grown man who's drunk too much beer has opened it; instead, I have to look down below the midde of the door to behold the sight of my two twin daughters and our puppies looking up at me with great big smiles of anticipation on their faces. But I've got a little bit of a frown on my own for them.

"You two, you should know better than to just open the door like that," I scold them a little. "What did I say? Ask who it is first, and then if you recognize their voice, then go ahead and open it, and if you don't know, ask Mom to come and see who it is."

"Ah...yes, Dad, we're sorry," Yuudahachi sincerely looks apologetic and bows her head a little at her neglectful forgetfulness. However, on the exact opposite of the apology spectrum, Sandachi just laughs and leaps forward to tug on my pants leg.

"C'mon, Tou-san, Kaa-san's already in the living room getting everything ready!" she says, completely ignoring my words and starting to drag me in. Of course, she being the daughters of a ship girl, Sandachi overpowers me unwittingly and I have to comply with her, nearly stumbling over my feet and not even letting me have a chance to take my shoes off before stepping onto the carpeted floor as we head to the living room.

"Waaahh, S-Sandachi-chan, Dad hasn't taken off his shoes yet, stop, stop!" Yuudahachi, being the good girl that she is, tries to stop her twin sister from forcing me further into the house still with shoes on, but Sandachi is too loudly singing "crackers! crackers!" to really bother to care, so we end up in the living anyway, where my wife, Yuudachi, is wearing a light tank top with the JMSDF logo on it and some jeans, and I, being the perfectly healthy husband that I am, immediately notice that she's not wearing anything underneath said tank top. Oh, how my wife has grown over the years...

"Ah, welcome back home, Colonel!" Yuudachi says cheerfully as ever, standing up from the floor to greet me. She's been preparing for our family game night that we randomly decided to do tonight because Sandachi saw a commercial on TV for Mario Kart 8, and she wanted to play it - as it turns out, my brother, being huge into all kinds of video games when we were still in school, had already bought loads of games for Kirisame and whenever she has friends like our twins or other cousins over. So I borrowed his console and game from him and headed out to buy some snacks for everyone for tonight. Speaking of Kiri-chan, at my asking, my brother asked her if she'd like to have a little sleepover with us for tonight as well to give him and Shigure some...adult time, let's just put it that way. Kiri-chan gratefully accepted, much to our twins' surprise and joy, and now Kiri-chan is sitting on the floor at a comfortable distance from our large TV, holding the Wii-U controller with near-uncontrollable excitement. Kirisame _loves _video games, even if she's not very good at them. Wonder where she got _that _from.

But back on topic - Yuudachi frowns at me a little when she looks down and notices that I've still got my shoes on as I set down the long wrapped boxes in my arm.

"Aw, c'mon, Colonel, you're setting a bad example for the kids," my wife scolds me a little bit too, perhaps karma for my own scolding of the twins for opening the door so hastily without checking and the knocker.

"It's not my fault, honest, Sandachi dragged me in," I say helplessly, but for the sake of avoiding a possible argument that might make the kids frightened and turn them off from what should be a fun night of snacks and video games, that's all I'm going to say to defend myself. Thankfully, Yuudahachi, being the absolute angel that she is, stands up in my defense.

"D-Dad got dragged in by San-chan, Mom! It's really not his fault, promise..." she says with a sad puppy look.

"Oh, it wasn't, then? Okay, okay, poi..." Yuudachi says quickly, not wanting to tread on Yuudahachi's feelings either. "Colonel, go put your shoes away quick, everything's done now. What did you buy, actually?"

I grin as I take off my shoes so that I don't walk back to the door with my shoes on through the house. "You'll see. The kids'll love it," I say with a tone of mystery, making Yuudachi tilt her head a little in piqued interest. And when I'm heading back down our small hallway to reach the door, I can already hear Yuudachi ripping open the paper wrappings because she's unable to contain her curiosity. I know for a fact that it's Yuudachi opening it, because the twins won't dare open anything wrapped that I bring home because they know that they're gifts; not even Sandachi will spoil herself, and obviously Kiri-chan is too much of an angel herself to do anything like that. And lo and behold, when I return, it's Yuudachi holding up one of the wrapped boxes with its wrappers freshly torn up and tossed aside.

And she's squealing even harder than the kids, who are also squealing at the tops of their lungs.

"C-C-Coloneeeeel!" Yuudachi cries as I reenter the living room, raising her prize that I bought for the family like Link would raise a rupee. "Y-You really bought this for us, pooooi?!"

I bought everyone four long boxes of gourmet thin creme wafers, the ones that look like miniature pancakes and are very thin but have assortments of sweetly-flavored cremes in between them, like Oreos. The flavors I bought for them (the boxes contain two creme flavors each) are chocolate (for myself, mainly), vanilla, orange, strawberry, raspberry, blueberry, coffee, and green tea. These wafers also happen to be my family's favorite snack of all time.

"Thank you, Dad/Tou-san!" my twins cry in unison as they stuff me in the gut and smash me down against the floor. I can hear Kiri-chan make a small gasp of fright seeing her cousins bear hug their father like this, but I just laugh and rub their heads as they rub their faces against my chest.

"Don't worry, Daddy knows what you girls want!" I declare, but before I can say any more, I hear my wife calling to the twins,

"Yuudahachi, Sandachi, move outta the way, it's my turn too!"

And that nearly makes me have to go get a fresh set of underwear.

"Oh, God, no, Yuudachi, not this again!" I scream as my two adorable shields roll away quickly to make way for a blonde cannonball known as Yuudachi, who leaps high into the air for a bellyflop._ "No, no no no nononooononononononono - "_

Our house shakes with the impact, and I myself make a flat grunt as the whole weight of an entire frickin' grown-up destroyer flattens my body. But I guess it's fine having a chest full of almost-broken ribs, because now I have a wife who's nuzzling her face into my chest saying things like

"Awwww, you're so thoughtful, Colonel, I looooove you, I loooooove you, poooooi~!"

And then my twins also join in, rolling over to my arms and rubbing their faces against my shoulder now, cooing the same things too. Ishii and Hisashi also trot over and lick my face a few times.

But then I remember - we're neglecting Kiri-chan. So with the weight of my whole family (literally), I get up from the floor.

"Hey, hey, we're forgetting Kiri-chan," I mention, and her name makes everyone tense up and turn to look at Shigure's daughter. Kirisame doesn't look bothered or anything - if anything, she just looks a little impatient because she wants to start having friendship time with her cousins and play some vidya gaems.

"Ah, yeah, let's play, let's play!" Yuudachi hastily says, for fear that if Kiri-chan tells her parents about how she got forgotten for a few moments, Shigure will come over to our house in the middle of the night and bust Yuudachi's butt in, and I'd probably get a telling from my own younger brother as well. The twins join their cousin and boot up the console to start playing, and Yuudachi and I open up the other boxes to reveal the other flavors.

"Kiri-chan, which ones would you like? We've got chocolate, vanilla, strawberry over there..." I offer my niece the variety of wafers that I've bought, and she looks at them all with sparkling eyes, as though she can't believe that she's getting spoiled like this. I'd bet my job that of all the Shiratsuyu-Class destroyers, Yuudachi's husband (me) spoils her kids the most. It might be a bad thing, but whatever, I love spoiling my family.

But to my surprise, while I'm expecting Kiri-chan to take a normal flavor like chocolate or vanilla (actually, on second thought, probably not vanilla, because even Kiri-chan knows how much the twins love vanilla and will destroy anything that contains it), she spies the one with green tea and immediately points to that. Not just that, but she specifically points to the half of the box that features the green tea flavor. That tells me that Kiri-chan not only probably isn't too big a fan of sweet stuff, but for her to pick green tea like that, she must actually have a big fondness for the tea too.

"Green tea, huh?" I can't hide my surprise. "Do you like green tea, Kiri-chan?"

"Yeah!" my niece nods very enthusiastically. It's so refreshing to see such a shy girl like her exude so much character.

"I see, I see. What do you like about it?"

Kirisame looks at me straight in the eye and states:

"Because Okaa-san makes us green tea every night, and I love Okaa-san!"

For a moment, my heart shuts down, and I flop backwards like a limp fish, and Kiri-chan watches me flop and just stares at me with a slight cock of her head, wondering what my reaction is all about. Now I know why she doesn't like sweet things as much as the twins do; it's because she herself is too sweet.

But I revive myself through the power of uncle-ly affection and give my niece a big ol' hug, rubbing the top of her black hair that resembles that of Shigure's so very much.

"D'awwwwwww," I make the manliest squeal a father can make. "You're spoiling your mommy too much, Kiri-chan."

The twins, having set up the game and turning to see if Kiri-chan is ready to play, see me giving their cousin a hug just for her, and worse, Kiri-chan looks supremely blissful that Uncle Shintora is showering her with love. Shocked at this sight, both Yuudahachi and Sandachi let out cries of fear and point their fingers dramatically at me.

"Dad loves Kiri-chan more than us, Mom!" Yuudahachi's stabbing words piece my heart. "He wants her as his daughter more than us! Stop him, Mom!"

"I-If that's how Tou-san wants it, then we'll go steal Kiri-chan's Tou-san away!" Sandachi declares. "Hug us too, Tou-san, or we'll go get Kiri-chan's Tou-san!"

I can't handle three girls all at once, so I turn to my wife for help. "Yuudachi, can you tell these two to - "

But Yuudachi looks hurt as well. Sniffling, she gives me her patented pained-puppy look that's guaranteed to slay young men, single and married alike.

"B-But you already have - you already have me, a-and th-the twins already..." she sniffs loudly, though her playful tone gives it away immediately. "...I-I can't believe you, Colonel, poi...!"

I swear my life isn't a romcom. I keep telling myself this every day, that I just have a household full of Poi.


End file.
